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An almost-intact human endogenous retrovirus K on human chromosome 7

Nature Genetics volume 21, pages 257–258 (1999)Cite this article

In contrast to the many defective endoge- nous retroviral sequences, the human endogenous retrovirus HERV-K(HML-2) (ref. 1) group shows conservation of intact retroviral genes (for review, see ref. 2). We have previously reported evidence that human chromosome 7 contains both intact HERV-K gag and env genes, indicating the possible existence of an HERV-K provirus with intact open reading frames (ORFs) for all retroviral genes3,4.

The long terminal repeats (LTRs) of HERV-K(HML-2.HOM) display intact sequence motifs for initiation and termination of transcription. The 5´ and 3´ LTR sequences differ by only 6 bp. Assuming that both LTRs were identical at the time of integration and were subsequently subjected to intronic mutation rates, the minimal difference between the sequences suggests they arose from a recent integration event approximately 1.2 million years ago5. Accordingly, the features of the LTRs group HERV-K(HML-2.HOM) into an evolutionary young HERV-K family6.

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Figure 1: Immunoblot analysis of HERV-K(HML-2.HOM)-encoded gag ('g') and gag-prt ('g-p') proteins prokaryotically expressed from the constructs pY20gag9 and pY20gp14, respectively, using methods described previously7.
Figure 2: HERV-K(HML-2.HOM) ORFs, protease and endonuclease sequences.

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Acknowledgements

We thank N. Kienzle for providing African, Asian and Oceanian DNA samples and B. Glass for critical reading of the manuscript. This work was supported by grants from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Mu 452/4-1 and SFB 399–Molekularpathologie der Proliferation A1/B2) and the Commission of the European Union (Gene-CT 93-0019).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Humangenetik, Haus 60,

    Jens Mayer, Alexander Rácz, Daniela Scherer & Eckart Meese

  2. Institut für Medizinische Mikrobiologie und Hygiene, Abteilung Virologie, Haus 47,

    Jens Mayer, Marlies Sauter & Nikolaus Mueller-Lantzsch

Author notes

  1. Universitätskliniken des Saarlandes, 66421 Homburg/Saar, Germany.

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    Correspondence to Eckart Meese.

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    Mayer, J., Sauter, M., Rácz, A. et al. An almost-intact human endogenous retrovirus K on human chromosome 7 . Nat Genet 21, 257–258 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/6766

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