Identification of an ancient endogenous retrovirus, predating the divergence of the placental mammals
Open Access
- 19 September 2013
- journal article
- research article
- Published by The Royal Society in Philosophical Transactions Of The Royal Society B-Biological Sciences
- Vol. 368 (1626), 20120503
- https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2012.0503
Abstract
The evolutionary arms race between mammals and retroviruses has long been recognized as one of the oldest host–parasite interactions. Rapid evolution rates in exogenous retroviruses have often made accurate viral age estimations highly problematic. Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs), however, integrate into the germline of their hosts, and are subjected to their evolutionary rates. This study describes, for the first time, a retroviral orthologue predating the divergence of placental mammals, giving it a minimum age of 104–110 Myr. Simultaneously, other orthologous selfish genetic elements (SGEs), inserted into the ERV sequence, provide evidence for the oldest individual mammalian-wide interspersed repeat and medium-reiteration frequency interspersed repeat mammalian repeats, with the same minimum age. The combined use of shared SGEs and reconstruction of viral orthologies defines new limits and increases maximum ‘lookback’ times, with subsequent implications for the field of paleovirology.Keywords
This publication has 42 references indexed in Scilit:
- Endogenous viruses: insights into viral evolution and impact on host biologyNature Reviews Genetics, 2012
- MEGA5: Molecular Evolutionary Genetics Analysis Using Maximum Likelihood, Evolutionary Distance, and Maximum Parsimony MethodsMolecular Biology and Evolution, 2011
- A novel web-based TinT application and the chronology of the Primate Alu retroposon activityBMC Evolutionary Biology, 2010
- Genomic Fossils Calibrate the Long-Term Evolution of HepadnavirusesPLoS Biology, 2010
- Identification of a RELIK orthologue in the European hare (Lepus europaeus) reveals a minimum age of 12 million years for the lagomorph lentivirusesVirology, 2009
- Discovery and analysis of the first endogenous lentivirusProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2007
- The delayed rise of present-day mammalsNature, 2007
- MUSCLE: multiple sequence alignment with high accuracy and high throughputNucleic Acids Research, 2004
- The endogenous retroviral locus ERVWE1 is a bona fide gene involved in hominoid placental physiologyProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2004
- Initial sequencing and comparative analysis of the mouse genomeNature, 2002