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About the Authors:
Kyriakos Tsangaras
Contributed equally to this work with: Kyriakos Tsangaras, Matthew C. Siracusa, Nikolas Nikolaidis
Affiliation: Department of Wildlife Diseases, Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Berlin, Germany
Matthew C. Siracusa
Contributed equally to this work with: Kyriakos Tsangaras, Matthew C. Siracusa, Nikolas Nikolaidis
Affiliation: Department of Biological Science and Center for Applied Biotechnology Studies, California State University, Fullerton, California, United States of America
Nikolas Nikolaidis
Contributed equally to this work with: Kyriakos Tsangaras, Matthew C. Siracusa, Nikolas Nikolaidis
Affiliation: Department of Biological Science and Center for Applied Biotechnology Studies, California State University, Fullerton, California, United States of America
Yasuko Ishida
Affiliation: Department of Animal Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, United States of America
Pin Cui
Affiliation: Department of Biological Science and Center for Applied Biotechnology Studies, California State University, Fullerton, California, United States of America
Hanna Vielgrader
Affiliation: Zoo Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Kristofer M. Helgen
Affiliation: National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, United States of America
Alfred L. Roca
Affiliation: Department of Animal Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, United States of America
Alex D. Greenwood
* E-mail: [email protected]
Affiliation: Department of Biological Science and Center for Applied Biotechnology Studies, California State University, Fullerton, California, United States of America
Introduction
Endogenous retrovirus-like elements (ERVs) are common in the genomes of vertebrates, comprising 8% of the human genome [1]. ERVs derive from retroviruses that invaded the germ line of ancestral host organisms, becoming permanent genomic elements in the host lineage. Although most ERVs have adapted to become non-pathogenic and non-functional in their host, a role in human health and disease has been established for some ERVs [2], [3]. One ERV in the human germ line has been co-opted as a functional gene, syncytin, which is critical for normal development of the human placenta [4]. Recently, another human ERV has been found to play a critical role in the progression of Hodgkin’s lymphoma [5]. Despite their biomedical importance, the process by which ERVs invade their host germ lines has been difficult to study, given that almost all known ERVs are many thousands or millions of years old.
The only retrovirus known to be in the midst of transitioning from an exogenous to an endogenous...