-
Categories
-
Pharmaceutical Intermediates
-
Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients
-
Food Additives
- Industrial Coatings
- Agrochemicals
- Dyes and Pigments
- Surfactant
- Flavors and Fragrances
- Chemical Reagents
- Catalyst and Auxiliary
- Natural Products
- Inorganic Chemistry
-
Organic Chemistry
-
Biochemical Engineering
- Analytical Chemistry
-
Cosmetic Ingredient
- Water Treatment Chemical
-
Pharmaceutical Intermediates
Promotion
ECHEMI Mall
Wholesale
Weekly Price
Exhibition
News
-
Trade Service
HML-2 ORF transcripts in humans: This map of the human body (adapted from the GTEx Alliance website with permission) shows the human endogenous proviral HML-2 ORF
that may be expressed in each sample tissue.
Blue represents Gag, green represents Pro, pink represents Env, and orange/purple represents Rec and Np9
, respectively.
The boxes represent expressions read from the transcription of neighboring or surrounding genes or other indeterminate expressions
.
The triangle shows LTR-driven viral ORF transcription
.
This figure shows the wide range of HML-2 virus ORF, transcribable
in non-diseased tissues throughout the body.
According to an Oct.
18 study published Oct.
18 by Aidan Burn and colleagues at Tufts University in Boston, remnants of ancient viruses in the human genome are active in both healthy and diseased tissues, limiting their usefulness as biomarkers of disease
.
Viral infection of sperm or egg cells can lead to permanent incorporation of viral genes into the host genome, and genetic remnants of ancient viruses — known as human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) — make up about 8 percent
of the human genome.
Although no longer infectious, some HERVs still contain intact genes, and the production of HERV RNA transcripts in human cells has been linked to
some cancers.
However, the expression of HERV in healthy tissues remains largely unexplored
.
To address this knowledge gap, the researchers used RNA sequence data from genotype tissue and expression projects to investigate the presence of
HML-2 transcripts belonging to the recent HERV subset in non-diseased tissues.
The database includes gene expression data
collected from nearly 1,000 individuals for 54 different tissue types.
The authors detected HML-2 transcripts in all tissue types, with elevated
levels in cerebellum, pituitary, testicular and thyroid tissue.
The results show that the activity of HML-2 is not limited to diseased or cancerous tissue, which has important clinical significance
.
For example, the use of HML-2 expression as a target for cancer biomarkers or therapies requires consideration of background expression
in non-diseased tissues.
The older HML-2 virus showed the highest expression levels in human tissues, which may indicate that the activity of younger, less degraded HERV fragments containing intact protein-coding sequences may be inhibited by cells to prevent the production of harmful viral proteins, the authors said
.
Senior author John Coffin added: "We have found that almost all normal human tissues express in their RNA one or another of about 36 endogenous proviruses that are remnants
of the widespread retrovirus infection of our distant ancestors.
We hope that this finding will provide a basis for
further research into the role of these elements in human biology and disease.
" ”
Widespread expression of the ancient HERV-K (HML-2) provirus group in normal human tissues.
PLoS Biol 20(10): e3001826.
