Foamy-like endogenous retroviruses are extensive and abundant in teleosts
Affiliation
Univ Arizona, Dept Ecol & Evolutionary BiolIssue Date
2016-12-30
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OXFORD UNIV PRESSCitation
Foamy-like endogenous retroviruses are extensive and abundant in teleosts 2016, 2 (2):vew032 Virus EvolutionJournal
Virus EvolutionRights
© The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License.Collection Information
This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at repository@u.library.arizona.edu.Abstract
Recent discoveries indicate that the foamy virus (FV) (Spumavirus) ancestor may have been among the first retroviruses to appear during the evolution of vertebrates, demonstrated by foamy endogenous retroviruses present within deeply divergent hosts including mammals, coelacanth, and ray-finned fish. If they indeed existed in ancient marine environments hundreds of millions of years ago, significant undiscovered diversity of foamy-like endogenous retroviruses might be present in fish genomes. By screening published genomes and by applying PCR-based assays of preserved tissues, we discovered 23 novel foamy-like elements in teleost hosts. These viruses form a robust, reciprocally monophyletic sister clade with sarcopterygian host FV, with class III mammal endogenous retroviruses being the sister group to both clades. Some of these foamy-like retroviruses have larger genomes than any known retrovirus, exogenous or endogenous, due to unusually long gag-like genes and numerous accessory genes. The presence of genetic features conserved between mammalian FV and these novel retroviruses attests to a foamy-like replication biology conserved for hundreds of millions of years. We estimate that some of these viruses integrated recently into host genomes; exogenous forms of these viruses may still circulate.Note
Open Access JournalISSN
2057-1577Version
Final published versionSponsors
NIH/NIAID [R01AI084691]; David and Lucile Packard FoundationAdditional Links
https://academic.oup.com/ve/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/ve/vew032ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1093/ve/vew032