Evolution of teleost fish retroviruses: characterization of new retroviruses with cellular genes.
The interactions between retroviruses and their hosts can be of a beneficial or detrimental nature. Some endogenous retroviruses are involved in development, while others cause disease. The Genome Parsing Suite (GPS) is a software tool to track and trace all Retroid agents in any sequenced genome (M. A. McClure et al., Genomics 85:512-523, 2005). Using the GPS, the retroviral content was assessed in four model teleost fish. Eleven new species of fish retroviruses are identified and characterized. The reverse transcriptase protein sequences were used to reconstruct a fish retrovirus phylogeny, thereby, significantly expanding the epsilon-retrovirus family. Most of these novel retroviruses encode additional genes, some of which are homologous to cellular genes that would confer viral advantage. Although the fish divergence is much more ancient, retroviruses began infecting fish genomes approximately 4 million years ago.
Basta
Holly A
HA
Department of Microbiology, Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana 59717, USA.
Cleveland
Sean B
SB
Clinton
Rochelle A
RA
Dimitrov
Alexander G
AG
McClure
Marcella A
MA
D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D018388:Codon, Terminator; D005399:Fishes / Q000821:virology*; D016368:Frameshift Mutation; D005821:Genetic Techniques; D016678:Genome; D008954:Models, Biological; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009154:Mutation; D010802:Phylogeny; D012194:RNA-Directed DNA Polymerase; D012190:Retroviridae / Q000235:genetics*; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D020079:Terminal Repeat Sequences
D018388:Codon, Terminator; D012194:RNA-Directed DNA Polymerase