“Unknown DNA” is common across modern genomics. In metagenomics it usually means a read lacks a close match in the current reference library or encodes a protein with no known function.
In human genetics it often means a new mutation, a structural variant, or a calling error that breaks the expected Mendelian pattern in a parent child trio. None of those categories imply nonhuman intelligence.
The October 2025 VICE story that went viral, which summarized a non peer-reviewed analysis claiming “inserted” non parental DNA in several 1000 Genomes families and speculated about alien intervention, is unverified. (VICE)
The underlying preprints and website posts are not in a mainstream journal, and the data as presented do not rule out established explanations such as de novo mutation, structural variant hotspots, phasing errors, or contamination in legacy low coverage datasets.
Meanwhile the United States All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office and NASA state that they have found no verified biological evidence of nonhuman intelligence linked to UAP. Both bodies evaluated unclassified data and public sensor archives, and their public conclusions coexist with sworn testimony to Congress by former intelligence officer David Grusch on July 26, 2023, who alleged crash retrieval programs and nonhuman biologics. Those claims remain unverified in the public record and are disputed by the Department of Defense and AARO. (U.S. Department of War)
This is the baseline
Extraordinary biological claims will need pre-registered sampling, cross lab replication, open raw data, and methods that can detect alternative genetic chemistries if they exist.
What “unknown DNA” means in 2025
Unclassified reads in metagenomics. When you shotgun sequence air, soil, water or surface swabs you get millions of short reads. Classifiers such as Kraken 2, Kaiju and Centrifuge compare those reads to reference libraries and return calls plus a tail of unclassified reads.
That tail can be large in complex, low biomass or poorly sampled environments and it shrinks as databases grow. Unknown in this context is a statement about the library and the algorithm, not about extraterrestrial origin.
Genes without recognizable relatives. Orphan genes and taxonomically restricted genes are common across life. They arise through rapid divergence and de novo gene birth and they often encode proteins with no annotated function. Their existence reflects how evolution generates novelty and how incomplete our catalogs still are. They do not, by themselves, imply nonhuman intelligence.
Proteins of unknown function. In microbes and especially in viruses, a large share of proteins still lack known structural homologs. A recent Nature analysis of the eukaryotic virome reported that most viral proteins remain unassigned by structure. Unknown function is routine in fast evolving systems. It is not evidence for nonhuman biology in a sample.
Unmapped or non parental reads in human trios. Every whole genome run yields reads that fail to map or genotypes that appear inconsistent with Mendelian inheritance. Causes include de novo mutations, structural variants, short tandem repeat dynamics, trio phasing errors, reference gaps and contamination.
A surge of recent trio studies shows how common and patterned those events are. As human references improved in 2022 and 2023, the ambiguous fraction declined. “Non parental” is therefore a moving target that demands careful quality control.
Environmental DNA in air and water. Airborne and aquatic eDNA surveys routinely recover human DNA and wildlife traces. It is powerful, and it is noisy. Without strict contamination controls, an “unknown” fraction in such samples tells you little about origin.
Alternative genetic chemistries exist in the lab. Chemists have built DNA like systems with more than four bases, including the eight letter hachimoji system. If something used such polymers, many routine assays would miss them or misread them.
Extraordinary claims would therefore require orthogonal detection with engineered polymerases, nanopore signal analysis and mass spectrometry. The plausibility of alternative heredity is a reason to broaden testing, not to accept any claim that includes the word unknown.
The 2025 viral story: what the VICE piece actually says, and what the data show
On October 7, 2025 VICE ran a story by Ashley Fike titled “Alien DNA May Exist Within Humans, Genetic Study Claims.” It summarized claims by Max Rempel, who runs the DNA Resonance Research Foundation, that analyses 581 families from the 1000 Genomes Project turned up blocks of DNA in 11 families that did not match either parent, amounting to 348 non-parental variants.
Rempel suggested these insertions could not be explained by modern gene editing and speculated about alien intervention. The article noted that the work was not peer reviewed, cited Daily Mail coverage of the same claims, and included a cautionary quote about contamination and technical error. It also reported that some 23andMe data from self-reported abductees showed what the author called non parental markers, though others did not.
Other outlets echoed the story within forty-eight hours, including NDTV and the New York Post, which repeated the core numbers and the extraterrestrial speculation while also noting that the study is unverified and not peer reviewed. The same claims appear in a ResearchGate preprint and on an rxiv page linked to the author. None of these platforms provide the complete trio level raw data, independent replication across labs, or a full quality control audit trail.
How to audit those claims using published genetics
First, ask which 1000 Genomes build, there are several. The legacy phase three 1000 Genomes data was largely low coverage, and Mendelian error rates are sensitive to depth, phasing and structural variant detection. A 2022 update delivered 30X high coverage genomes for 3,202 samples, including 602 complete trios, precisely to reduce such artifacts. If an analysis based on older, low coverage trios reports mismatches to parents, you must repeat the call set on the high coverage trios and modern references.
Second, compare to known de novo and structural variant rates. Recent trio studies report roughly one to two hundred de novo events per transmission when you include single nucleotide variants, indels, tandem repeat dynamics and centromeric changes.
Structural variants and short tandem repeat changes contribute many non parental calls. You cannot label a call “alien” until you have excluded this background with rigorous filters and orthogonal confirmation.
Third, quantify Mendelian errors and their usual causes. Mendelian inconsistent calls cluster in repetitive regions, copy number losses and low complexity tracts, and many are resolved once you correct phasing, re genotype at higher depth, or remove contamination. There is a literature on this, because trio based QC depends on it. Any extraordinary claim must show that the alleged non parental variants survive those filters and validations.
Fourth, respect what consumer genotyping can and cannot do. Direct to consumer microarrays and imputed datasets are not optimized for structural variant discovery, long repeats or complex indels. Interpreting 23andMe outputs from self reported abductees as evidence of engineered insertions ignores those limits and invites false positives.
Fifth, consider ordinary biology that already looks exotic. About eight percent of the human genome consists of endogenous retroviral sequences inherited from ancient infections. These HERVs and other transposable elements create insertion like signatures and regulatory effects that can look unusual to non specialists. They are Earth biology. They are well reviewed in 2022 through 2025 papers across multiple journals.
None of this proves that nonhuman intervention is impossible. It shows why the 2025 claims in their current form are not persuasive.
The dataset is not suited to the conclusion, the analysis does not report the quality controls that would be expected in a trio study today, and the speculation runs far ahead of any validated mechanism.
Where government UAP work stands on biology
The All domain Anomaly Resolution Office, created by Congress in 2022 and placed in statute in 2023, published Volume 1 of its historical record review in March 2024. It reported no empirical evidence that any United States program had confirmed extraterrestrial technology or recovered nonhuman biology. NASA’s independent UAP study panel released its report in September 2023, called for calibrated, open data and likewise reported no evidence of extraterrestrial origin in the datasets it reviewed. Both efforts drew primarily from unclassified sources, which sets a limit on what could be publicly assessed and leaves unresolved the classified allegations raised in sworn testimony. (U.S. Department of War)
Those documents are the most relevant official publications for our topic. They do not settle the question forever, but they state clearly what has and has not been verified as of today, while legislators have heard under oath from a former intelligence officer that crash retrieval programs and nonhuman biologics exist. Those allegations remain unverified in the public record. (Congress.gov)
Publications that matter for interpreting “unknown DNA”
Human references upgraded. The Telomere to Telomere consortium’s gapless human reference and the Human Pangenome graph reference improved mapping and variant calling, which shrinks the ambiguous and non parental categories in human sequencing.
De novo and structural variation are ubiquitous. Trio studies through 2024 and 2025 quantify mutation and repeat dynamics across the genome and show how many apparent mismatches are expected in healthy families.
Viral and microbial novelty is the norm, not the exception. Structure based analyses keep finding that many viral proteins lack known homologs, which is a reminder to treat unknown labels as signals about our databases, not as evidence for visitors.
HERVs are part of us. Reviews across 2022 to 2025 synthesize the biology of endogenous retroviruses, which comprise about eight percent of our genome and can regulate development and disease. That history explains why insertion like signatures are common in humans without invoking nonhuman intelligence.
Known figures in the cross current of UAP and biology
Garry Nolan
Co-author of the whole genome analysis that resolved the widely publicized Atacama specimen as human with pathogenic variants. That paper is a model for how peer reviewed genomics dispatches sensational claims.
Nolan has also applied isotopic and microstructural methods to alleged UAP materials and co-authored a 2022 review in Progress in Aerospace Sciences on aerospace forensics methods relevant to metamaterials, alongside case studies revisiting Council Bluffs and magnesium fragments linked to the Ubatuba event. (Stanford Magazine)
Separately, at the request of government and aerospace contacts, Nolan has assessed physiological effects reported by military and intelligence personnel who had close proximity encounters, including review of MRI scans that showed unusual features in the caudate and putamen in a subset of cases. This work remains in progress and mostly public through interviews and profiles, and it aligns with earlier DIA commissioned surveys of anomalous field effects on human biology that cited cases such as Cash Landrum. (Stanford Magazine)
Steven Benner and colleagues
Builders of hachimoji DNA and other expanded alphabets. Their work is a reminder that detection strategies must accommodate non canonical bases if the goal is to rule out or detect truly novel heredity.
David Spergel and NASA’s UAP team
Architects of the 2023 independent study report that set a science plan for UAP, emphasizing open methods and calibrated sensors. (NASA Science)
AARO leadership. The office’s public reports and FOIA releases document its process, including materials testing of alleged artifacts and the historical record review. On biology it has found no verified evidence of recovered nonhuman remains. (U.S. Department of War)
Max Rempel
Proponent of the 2025 “alien DNA in humans” hypothesis summarized by VICE and others. His materials are on ResearchGate and rxiv and are not peer reviewed. The claims rest on public datasets where ordinary trio genetics and QC issues provide strong alternative explanations.
Controversies, clearly framed
Media amplification versus method. The VICE feature is careful to flag that the work is not peer reviewed and quotes skepticism, but widespread aggregation still turns speculation into a headline. NDTV and tabloid outlets repeated the claims. None of this substitutes for raw data and code.
Old datasets, new stories. The 1000 Genomes phase three trios were revolutionary twelve years ago, but they were low coverage. The high coverage update exists precisely to reduce artifactual non parental calls. Any modern claim should re analyze against those higher quality trios and newer references.
Biology that looks alien at first glance. Endogenous retroviruses, transposons, and tandem repeats create insertion like signals that a casual pipeline can misinterpret as exotic. The literature on HERVs, repeat dynamics and structural variation is huge; it must be engaged before extraordinary claims are entertained.
Practical implications for serious UAP biology work
Demand pre-registration and chain of custody. If a team claims biological residue at a UAP site, the sampling plan, GPS and time stamps, and custody chain should be registered in advance.
Use appropriate labs and standards. Low biomass samples require ISO 18385 grade consumables, extraction blanks and dual index libraries to mitigate contamination and index hopping.
Run orthogonal analytics. Start with universal barcodes where useful, proceed to shotgun metagenomics, then add structure prediction for unassigned proteins. If canonical DNA is not amplified, include XNA aware assays and chemistry such as mass spectrometry and nanopore signal analysis.
Publish raw files and code. Put FASTQs, metadata and analysis scripts in a public repository at the time of preprint. Invite adversarial reanalysis.
Replicate across clean rooms. Extraordinary claims should be reproduced in independent facilities by teams blinded to which aliquots are supposed to be unusual.
Existing physical trace and physiological cases that merit rigorous reanalysis using the above methods.
- Socorro, New Mexico 1964, a close encounter with landing traces investigated by Project Blue Book and left as “unknown.”
- Delphos, Kansas 1971, a ring of hydrophobic soil with unusual efflorescence reported in multiple lab tests.
- Ubatuba, Brazil 1957, magnesium fragments of exceptional purity with subsequent isotopic work debating anomalies.
- Cash Landrum, Texas 1980, witnesses with acute symptoms consistent with a powerful field exposure and cited in the DIA survey of anomalous effects.
These are unverified and disputed in parts of the literature but they present concrete samples and records that can be tested with modern chain of custody and open methods.
A field guide to the VICE claim, line by line
“Large chunks of DNA appeared that did not match either parent”
Ask whether the signal persists when re called on the 30X trios and the pangenome reference and whether orthogonal methods confirm a structural variant rather than a mapping artifact. Trio papers in 2025 show many such events are expected.
“348 non-parental variants”
Compare that count to expected totals of de novo events per child when you include single nucleotide changes, small indels, tandem repeat expansions and centromeric events. The reported scale is not obviously outside contemporary expectations without a detailed breakdown.
“23andMe data from abductees show non parental markers”
Direct to consumer microarrays are not designed to detect long insertions, complex repeats or many structural variants. Treat such claims as uninformative until they are tested with whole genome sequencing and validated calls.
“Alien intervention as explanation”
Biology offers many nearer explanations, and the author acknowledges the work is not peer reviewed. The extraordinary step requires extraordinary controls, plus proof that conventional genetics, contamination and known mobile elements cannot explain the data.
Bottom line
The VICE article captures a familiar dance. A provocative claim arrives with suggestive numbers and a promise to collect better data. The claim is not peer reviewed. The datasets used are old, and the alleged anomalies sit in regions and variant classes where ordinary genetics already produces many non-parental calls.
Official reviews by NASA and AARO are necessarily limited to unclassified sources and they co-exist with sworn testimony to Congress that alleges crash retrieval and nonhuman biologics.
There is still no verified DNA evidence that links UAP to nonhuman intelligence. If someone presents such evidence and it survives open, cross lab scrutiny with the controls listed here, that would be historic. (NASA Science)
Relevant and Active Links
VICE: “‘Alien’ DNA May Exist Within Humans, Genetic Study Claims” (October 7, 2025)
https://www.vice.com/en/article/alien-dna-may-exist-within-humans-genetic-study-claims
ResearchGate: Preprint by Max Rempel — Preliminary Evidence of Traces of Alien Genetic Manipulation in Humans (May 31, 2025)
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/392237626_Preliminary_evidence_of_traces_of_alien_genetic_manipulation_in_humans
rxiv: Posting of the same claim (May 30, 2025)
https://rxiv.org/abs/2505.0194
NDTV: “Researchers Claim ‘Alien’ DNA in Humans Might Be Inserted Into Our Genes” (October 7, 2025)
https://www.ndtv.com/offbeat/researchers-claim-alien-dna-in-humans-might-be-inserted-into-our-genes-9408086
New York Post: “Alien DNA Lurks Inside Human Genome, Scientist Claims” (October 6, 2025)
https://nypost.com/2025/10/06/science/alien-dna-lurks-inside-human-genome-scientist-claims
1000 Genomes Project: High-coverage resource with 602 trios (2022)
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36055201
Nature: “Trio Mutation Rates and Repeat Dynamics” (2025)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08922-2
AARO: Historical Record Report, Volume 1 (March 2024)
https://www.aaro.mil/Portals/136/PDFs/AARO_Historical_Record_Report_Vol_1_2024.pdf
NASA: UAP Independent Study Team Final Report (September 2023)
https://science.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/uap-independent-study-team-final-report.pdf
Frontiers in Immunology: Review of human endogenous retroviruses (2022–2025)
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2022.1057791/full
Physiological Genomics: HERV Functional Insights and Genomic Implications (2022)
https://journals.physiology.org/doi/10.1152/physiolgenomics.00171.2022
U.S. House Oversight Subcommittee: Hearing on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (July 26, 2023)
Transcript: https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/116282/documents/HHRG-118-GO06-Transcript-20230726.pdf
Video: https://www.c-span.org/program/house-committee/hearing-on-unidentified-anomalous-phenomena-ufos/630344
Stanford Magazine: Profile on Garry Nolan — First Contact (July 2023)
https://stanfordmag.org/contents/first-contact
Progress in Aerospace Sciences: Nolan, Vallée et al., Aerospace Forensics and Isotopic Analysis (2022)
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2022PrAeS.12800788N/abstract
Journal of Scientific Exploration: Isotope Ratios and Chemical Analysis of the 1957 Brazilian Ubatuba Magnesium Sample (2022)
https://journalofscientificexploration.org/index.php/jse/article/view/2415/1565
Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU): A New Appraisal of the Data of the Delphos CE2 1971 Case (2022)
https://www.explorescu.org/post/a-new-appraisal-of-the-data-of-the-delphos-ce2-1971-case
Project Blue Book: Socorro, New Mexico Case File (1964)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Project_Blue_Book_report_-_1964-04-8694587-Socorro-NewMexico.pdf
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA): Anomalous Acute and Subacute Field Effects on Human and Biological Tissues (2010, released via FOIA)
https://www.dia.mil/FOIA/FOIA-Electronic-Reading-Room/FileId/170026
References
VICE, “‘Alien’ DNA May Exist Within Humans, Genetic Study Claims,” Oct 7, 2025. (VICE)
Rempel, “Preliminary Evidence of Traces of Alien Genetic Manipulation in Humans,” ResearchGate preprint, May 31, 2025; and rxiv posting, May 30, 2025. (ResearchGate)
NDTV, “Researchers Claim ‘Alien’ DNA In Humans Might Be Inserted Into Our Genes,” Oct 7, 2025; New York Post coverage, Oct 6, 2025. (www.ndtv.com)
Byrska Bishop et al., “High coverage whole genome sequencing of the expanded 1000 Genomes cohort,” 2022. (PubMed)
Porubsky et al., “Human de novo mutation rates from a four generation pedigree reference,” 2025, with companion PubMed record. (Nature)
Kothiyal et al., “Mendelian inconsistent signatures…” 2019; and related preprint on Mendelian inheritance errors in trios, 2017. (PMC)
AARO, “Historical Record Report, Volume 1,” Mar 2024. (AARO) (U.S. Department of War)
NASA, “UAP Independent Study Team Final Report,” Sept 2023; and agency UAP page. (NASA Science) (NASA Science)
Viral protein novelty and unknown structure fraction, Nature 2024. (internationalgenome.org)
Reviews on human endogenous retroviruses and their prevalence in the genome, 2022–2025. (Frontiers)
ISO 18385 guidance for forensic grade consumables in low biomass DNA work.
Hachimoji DNA and the need for orthogonal detection of non canonical bases.
Metagenomic classifier behavior and unclassified read tails.
Nolan et al., Genome Research 2018 on the Atacama specimen.
House Oversight Subcommittee hearing on UAP with sworn testimony by David Grusch, transcript and video, July 26, 2023. (U.S. Congress; C-SPAN) (Congress.gov)
TIME coverage of sworn testimony and Pentagon response. (TIME) (TIME)
Stanford Magazine profile of Garry Nolan covering his Progress in Aerospace Sciences paper and MRI findings in caudate and putamen. (Stanford Magazine) (Stanford Magazine)
Nolan, Vallée, Jiang, Lemke, “Improved instrumental techniques, including isotopic analysis, applicable to the characterization of unusual materials with potential relevance to aerospace forensics,” Progress in Aerospace Sciences 128, 2022. (NASA ADS abstract) (Astrophysics Data System)
Journal of Scientific Exploration, “Isotope Ratios and Chemical Analysis of the 1957 Brazilian Ubatuba Magnesium Sample,” 2022. (JSE) (Journal of Scientific Exploration)
SCU, “A New Appraisal of the Data of the Delphos CE2 1971 Case,” 2022. (SCU) (The SCU)
Project Blue Book, Socorro case file, 1964. (USAF archives) (Wikimedia Commons)
DIA FOIA, “Anomalous Acute and Subacute Field Effects on Human and Biological Tissues,” 2010 paper released via FOIA. (DIA) (Defense Intelligence Agency)
Claims Taxonomy
Verified
Endogenous retroviral sequences comprise about eight percent of the human genome and can create insertion like signatures and regulatory effects.
Trio based human studies in 2024 and 2025 find many de novo events per generation once repeats and structural variants are properly analyzed.
Probable
Re-analysis of legacy low coverage trios from the 1000 Genomes Project with high coverage data and modern references will explain many “non parental” calls through de novo mutation, repeat dynamics, structural variants and mapping artifacts.
Disputed
The 2025 claim that “alien DNA may exist within humans” rests on non peer reviewed analyses without public raw data, independent replication or a full QC trail. Media amplification exists, but the scientific case is not established.
Legend
Cultural narratives that governments or private contractors hold sequenced nonhuman genomes persist, but official inquiries to date report no empirical confirmation in records they can access. (U.S. Department of War)
Misidentification
Several widely publicized “nonhuman” specimens in the last decade resolved as human or as fabricated composites when sequenced or examined forensically, most famously the Atacama specimen.
Speculation labels
Hypothesis. If an alternative hereditary polymer were present in an alleged UAP residue, we would expect a consistent pattern across labs of PCR failure under standard conditions combined with reproducible, non canonical nanopore current signatures and mass spectra of unusual bases or sugars. That cross modality signature would be a stronger lead than any percentage of unknown reads.
Witness interpretation. People who report “nonhuman biologics” may be relaying sincere memories or secondhand accounts. Without chain of custody and raw data that survive independent replication, such statements are not testable.
Researcher opinion. The greatest near term payoff of investigating “unknown DNA” claims rigorously will likely be novel Earth biology and better contamination controls. If something truly nonhuman appears, it will withstand every control listed above.
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