TY  - JOUR
A1  - Dewannieux, Marie
A1  - Harper, Francis
A1  - Richaud, Aurélien
A1  - Letzelter, Claire
A1  - Ribet, David
A1  - Pierron, Gérard
A1  - Heidmann, Thierry
T1  - Identification of an infectious progenitor for the multiple-copy HERV-K human endogenous retroelements
Y1  - 2006/12/01 
JF  - Genome Research 
JO  - Genome Research 
SP  - gr.5565706 
EP  - gr.5565706 
DO  - 10.1101/gr.5565706 
VL  - 16 
IS  - 12 
UR  - http://genome.cshlp.org/content/early/2006/10/31/gr.5565706.abstract 
N2  - Human Endogenous Retroviruses are expected to be the remnants of ancestral infections of primates by active retroviruses that have thereafter been transmitted in a Mendelian fashion. Here, we derived in silico the sequence of the putative ancestral “progenitor” element of one of the most recently amplified family—the HERV-K family—and constructed it. This element, Phoenix, produces viral particles that disclose all of the structural and functional properties of a bona-fide retrovirus, can infect mammalian, including human, cells, and integrate with the exact signature of the presently found endogenous HERV-K progeny. We also show that this element amplifies via an extracellular pathway involving reinfection, at variance with the non-LTR-retrotransposons (LINEs SINEs) or LTR-retrotransposons, thus recapitulating ex vivo the molecular events responsible for its dissemination in the host genomes. We also show that in vitro recombinations among present-day human HERV-K loci can similarly generate functional HERV-K elements, indicating that human cells still have the potential to produce infectious retroviruses. 
ER  -