Germ cell expression of an isolated human endogenous retroviral long terminal repeat of the HERV-K/HTDV family in transgenic mice.

ABSTRACT: In contrast to most other human endogenous retroviral families, various HERV-K members have open reading frames that code for functional viral proteins which can form noninfectious particles in some germ cell tumors. The HERV-K viral genes are highly transcribed in germ cell tumors but are transcribed to lower or undetectable levels in most other tissue and tumor types. To further analyze the expression patterns of these proviruses, long terminal repeats (LTRs) were isolated from the human genome and used in reporter gene assays. Expression of some HERV-K LTRs was found to be high in human and murine germ cell tumors (testicular teratocarcinomas) and low in non-germ-cell tumors. Furthermore, upon differentiation of a teratocarcinoma cell line, the expression of an active LTR dropped dramat

SUBMITTER: Casau AE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC113048 | biostudies-literature | 1999 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature