Cross-Species Transmission and Differential Fate of an Endogenous Retrovirus in Three Mammal Lineages.

ABSTRACT: Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) arise from retroviruses chromosomally integrated in the host germline. ERVs are common in vertebrate genomes and provide a valuable fossil record of past retroviral infections to investigate the biology and evolution of retroviruses over a deep time scale, including cross-species transmission events. Here we took advantage of a catalog of ERVs we recently produced for the bat Myotis lucifugus to seek evidence for infiltration of these retroviruses in other mammalian species (>100) currently represented in the genome sequence database. We provide multiple lines of evidence for the cross-ordinal transmission of a gammaretrovirus endogenized independently in the lineages of vespertilionid bats, felid cats and pangolin ~13-25 million years ago. Following its init

SUBMITTER: Zhuo X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4643047 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature