Endogenous Retroviruses Drive Resistance and Promotion of Exogenous Retroviral Homologs.
Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) serve as markers of ancient viral infections and provide invaluable insight into host and viral evolution. ERVs have been exapted to assist in performing basic biological functions, including placentation, immune modulation, and oncogenesis. A subset of ERVs share high nucleotide similarity to circulating horizontally transmitted exogenous retrovirus (XRV) progenitors. In these cases, ERV-XRV interactions have been documented and include (a) recombination to result in ERV-XRV chimeras, (b) ERV induction of immune self-tolerance to XRV antigens, (c) ERV antigen interference with XRV receptor binding, and (d) interactions resulting in both enhancement and restriction of XRV infections. Whereas the mechanisms governing recombination and immune self-tolerance have been partially determined, enhancement and restriction of XRV infection are virus specific and only partially understood. This review summarizes interactions between six unique ERV-XRV pairs, highlighting important ERV biological functions and potential evolutionary histories in vertebrate hosts.
['Chiu|Elliott S|ES|', 'VandeWoude|Sue|S|']
D000818:Animals D000956:Antigens, Viral D001717:Birds D020077:Endogenous Retroviruses D019143:Evolution, Molecular D008322:Mammals D012190:Retroviridae D012192:Retroviridae Infections
ASLV FeLV JSRV KoRV MMTV MuLV avian sarcoma leukosis virus feline leukemia virus jaagsiekte sheep retrovirus koala retrovirus mouse mammary tumor virus murine leukemia virus