Identification of an envelope protein from the FRD family of human endogenous retroviruses (HERV-FRD) conferring infectivity and functional conservation among simians.

ABSTRACT: A member of the HERV-W family of human endogenous retroviruses (HERV) had previously been demonstrated to encode a functional envelope which can form pseudotypes with human immunodeficiency virus type 1 virions and confer infectivity on the resulting retrovirus particles. Here we show that a second envelope protein sorted out by a systematic search for fusogenic proteins that we made among all the HERV coding envelope genes and belonging to the HERV-FRD family can also make pseudotypes and confer infectivity. We further show that the orthologous envelope genes that were isolated from simians-from New World monkeys to humans-are also functional in the infectivity assay, with one singular exception for the gibbon HERV-FRD gene, which is found to be fusogenic in a cell-cell fusion assay, as o

SUBMITTER: Blaise S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC368808 | biostudies-literature | 2004 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature