Origin and recent expansion of an endogenous gammaretroviral lineage in domestic and wild canids.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Vertebrate genomes contain a record of retroviruses that invaded the germlines of ancestral hosts and are passed to offspring as endogenous retroviruses (ERVs). ERVs can impact host function since they contain the necessary sequences for expression within the host. Dogs are an important system for the study of disease and evolution, yet no substantiated reports of infectious retroviruses in dogs exist. Here, we utilized Illumina whole genome sequence data to assess the origin and evolution of a recently active gammaretroviral lineage in domestic and wild canids.

Results

We identified numerous recently integrated loci of a canid-specific ERV-Fc sublineage within Canis, including 58 insertions that were absent from the reference assembly. Insertions were found throu

SUBMITTER: Halo JV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6407205 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature