Identification of an infectious progenitor for the multiple-copy HERV-K human endogenous retroelements
- Marie Dewannieux1,3,
- Francis Harper2,4,
- Aurélien Richaud1,4,
- Claire Letzelter1,
- David Ribet1,
- Gérard Pierron2, and
- Thierry Heidmann1,5
Abstract
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.
Footnotes
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↵5 Corresponding author.
↵5 E-mail heidmann{at}igr.fr; fax 33-1-42-11-53-42.
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Article published online before print. Article and publication date are at http://www.genome.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gr.5565706
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- Received May 28, 2006.
- Accepted August 30, 2006.
- Copyright © 2006, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
