Jumping genes leap across cells and generations

Jumping genes’, or transposable elements, are DNA sequences that move around the genome, but were thought to stay confined to the cell they occupy. Scientists at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences discovered that in fruit flies, certain transposable elements can break out of their own cell and slip into developing eggs the same way some viruses move from cell to cell. The discovery, now published in the journal Cell, reveals a completely new route for these genes to spread from parent to offspring, generation after generation.

Artistic representation of how jumping genes (pink) are transferred to the egg (right) from an adjacent cell (left) with the help of finger-like structures and a specialized protein mediating cell fusion (teal). AI-generated by Maya Voichek and Anna Stanescu.

Researchers in the lab of Julius Brennecke at IMBA now show in a fruit fly model that a group of transposable elements manipulate their host cell to break loose and infect nearby cells. These jumping genes are active in the ovary, shipping themselves from neighboring cells to the developing egg, a foothold that guarantees the transposable element’s own survival across generations. The new study, now published in the journal Cell, blurs the established line between transposable elements and viruses.

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Original publication

Maya Voichek, Andreas Bernhard*, Lea Lauterjung*, Maria Novatchkova, Dominik Handler, Paul Möseneder, Liudmila Protsenko, Baptiste Rafanel, Svetlana Iarovenko, Peter Duchek, Kirsten-André Senti**, Julius Brennecke**. Direct cell-to-cell transmission of retrotransposons. Cell, 2026. DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2026.08.047

*these authors contributed equally to the study

**co-corresponding authors

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