Lei Jia, Mengying Liu, Caiqin Yang, Hanping Li, Yongjian Liu, Jingwan Han, Xiuli Zhai, Xiaolin Wang, Tianyi Li, Jingyun Li, Bohan Zhang, Changyuan Yu, Lin Li
BACKGROUND: Human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) result from ancestral infections caused by exogenous retroviruses that became incorporated into the germline DNA and evolutionarily fixed in the human genome. HERVs can be transmitted vertically in a Mendelian fashion and be stably maintained in the human genome, of which they are estimated to comprise approximately 8%. HERV-K (HML1-10) transcription has been confirmed to be associated with a variety of diseases, such as breast cancer, lung cancer, prostate cancer, melanoma, rheumatoid arthritis, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis...
June 8, 2022: Retrovirology