Endogenous Viral Elements in Animal Genomes

By Aris Katzourakis, Robert J. Gifford. PLoS Genetics, 2010

632 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Integration into the nuclear genome of germ line cells can lead to vertical inheritance of retroviral genes as host alleles. For other viruses, germ line integration has only rarely been documented. Nonetheless, we identified endogenous viral elements (EVEs) derived from ten non-retroviral families by systematic in silico screening of animal genomes, including the first endogenous representatives of double-stranded RNA, reverse-transcribing DNA, and segmented RNA viruses, and the first endogenous DNA viruses in mammalian genomes. Phylogenetic and genomic analysis of EVEs across multiple host species revealed novel information about the origin and evolution of diverse virus groups. Furthermore, several of the elements identified here encode intact open reading frames or are expressed as mRNA. For one element in the primate lineage, we provide statistically robust evidence for exaptation. Our findings establish that genetic material derived from all known viral genome types and replication strategies can enter the animal germ line, greatly broadening the scope of paleovirological studies and indicating a more significant evolutionary role for gene flow from virus to animal genomes than has previously been recognized.

Subfields: Animal Science and Zoology, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cb570f472cbec538f60fede0f8a680cf4dbe408e

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Animal Science and Zoology

1. I. Zilber-Rosenberg
2. Eugene Rosenberg
3. Edward C. Holmes

In Plant Science

1. I. Zilber-Rosenberg
2. Eugene Rosenberg
3. Yong‐Zhen Zhang
4. Edward C. Holmes

Citations in the corpus

• Unprecedented genomic diversity of RNA viruses in arthropods reveals the ancestry of negative-sense RNA viruses (2015, background): “Interestingly, in some cases, such as the putative glycoprotein gene of chuviruses, the homologous EVEs from within a family (Culicidae) or even an order (Hymenoptera) form monophyletic groups (Figure 11).”
• The Hologenome Concept: Human, Animal and Plant Microbiota (2014, background): “One way in which viruses can be vertically transmitted is by integrating into the host genome and becoming part of the genetic material of their host species, a process that is called endogenization (Katzourakis and Gifford 2010).”