Human endogenous retroviral elements belonging to the HERV-S family from human tissues, cancer cells, and primates: expression, structure, phylogeny and evolution.
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.
Yi
Joo-Mi
JM
Division of Biological Sciences, College of Natural Sciences, Pusan National University, Pusan 609-735, Korea.
Kim
Tae-Hyung
TH
Huh
Jae-Won
JW
Park
Kyoung Sun
KS
Jang
Se Bok
SB
Kim
Hwan-Mook
HM
Kim
Heui-Soo
HS
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
D018076:DNA, Complementary; D015684:Gene Products, pol; D020815:Polyproteins