title: Human endogenous retroviral elements belonging to the HERV-S family from human tissues, cancer cells, and primates: expression, structure, phylogeny and evolution.
abstract: A new human endogenous retrovirus family (HERV-S) was recently identified from the human chromosome X. The HERV-S was 6.7 kb in length with typical retroviral structure (LTR-gag-pol-env-LTR). We investigated pol fragments of HERV-S family in various human tissues and cancer cells. The pol gene was expressed in only brain and thymus among human tissues (brain, prostate, testis, heart, kidney, liver, lung, placenta, skeletal muscle, spleen, thymus, uterus), whereas the pol gene was detected in various cancer cell lines (RT4, PFSK-1, BT-474, HCT-116, Jurkat, HepG2, MCF7, OVCAR-3, MIA-PaCa-2, PC3, LOX-IMVI, AZ521, 2F7, and C-33A) except for TE-1, UO-31, A549, and U-937 by RT-PCR analysis. Expression and sequencing data of the 33 clones imply that the pol gene of HERV-S family is more active in cancer cells than in human tissues, which may have transcriptional potential role related to various human cancers. Phylogenetic analysis of HERV-S pol family distinctively divided into three groups (group I, II, and III) through evolutionary divergence in primate evolution. Evolutionary divergence of the HERV-S family by PCR amplification and sequence analysis indicated that they were integrated into the primate genomes approximately 43 Myr ago and have been evolved rate of 0.3% nucleotide differences per Myr during primate evolution.
authors.affiliation: Division of Biological Sciences, College of Natural Sciences, Pusan National University, Pusan 609-735, Korea.
authors.forename: Joo-Mi
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Yi
authors.forename: Tae-Hyung
authors.initials: TH
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Jae-Won
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Huh
authors.forename: Kyoung Sun
authors.initials: KS
authors.lastname: Park
authors.forename: Se Bok
authors.initials: SB
authors.lastname: Jang
authors.forename: Hwan-Mook
authors.initials: HM
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Heui-Soo
authors.initials: HS
authors.lastname: Kim
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D045744:Cell Line, Tumor; D018076:DNA, Complementary / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D020077:Endogenous Retroviruses / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D005260:Female; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D015684:Gene Products, pol / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D006801:Humans; D019169:Jurkat Cells; D008297:Male; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D020815:Polyproteins / Q000235:genetics; D011323:Primates / Q000235:genetics*; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D020298:U937 Cells
chemical_list: D018076:DNA, Complementary; D015684:Gene Products, pol; D020815:Polyproteins