title: Demographic histories of ERV-K in humans, chimpanzees and rhesus monkeys.
abstract: We detected 19 complete endogenous retroviruses of the K family in the genome of rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta; RhERV-K) and 12 full length elements in the genome of the common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes; CERV-K). These sequences were compared with 55 human HERV-K and 20 CERV-K reported previously, producing a total data set of 106 full-length ERV-K genomes. Overall, 61% of the human elements compared to 21% of the chimpanzee and 47% of rhesus elements had estimated integration times less than 4.5 million years before present (MYBP), with an average integration times of 7.8 MYBP, 13.4 MYBP and 10.3 MYBP for HERV-K, CERV-K and RhERV-K, respectively. By excluding those ERV-K sequences generated by chromosomal duplication, we used 63 of the 106 elements to compare the population dynamics of ERV-K among species. This analysis indicated that both HERV-K and RhERV-K had similar demographic histories, including markedly smaller effective population sizes, compared to CERV-K. We propose that these differing ERV-K dynamics reflect underlying differences in the evolutionary ecology of the host species, such that host ecology and demography represent important determinants of ERV-K dynamics.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Molecular Evolution and Bioinformatics, Department of Microbiology, Biomedical Sciences Institute-ICBII, University of São Paulo, Brazil.
authors.forename: Camila M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Romano
authors.forename: Fernando L
authors.initials: FL
authors.lastname: de Melo
authors.forename: Marco Aurelio B
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Corsini
authors.forename: Edward C
authors.initials: EC
authors.lastname: Holmes
authors.forename: Paolo M de A
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Zanotto
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002875:Chromosomes / Q000378:metabolism; D004463:Ecology; D020077:Endogenous Retroviruses / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D005828:Genetics, Population; D016678:Genome; D016679:Genome, Viral; D006801:Humans; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D008253:Macaca mulatta; D008954:Models, Biological; D002679:Pan troglodytes; D011323:Primates; D014777:Virus Diseases / Q000235:genetics