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Ribosomal profiling of human endogenous retroviruses in healthy tissues.

Nicholas DopkinsBhavya SinghStephanie MichaelPanpan ZhangJez L MarstonTongyi FeiManvendra SinghCedric FeschotteNicholas CollinsMatthew L BendallDouglas F Nixon
Published in: BMC genomics (2024)
Human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) are the germline embedded proviral fragments of ancient retroviral infections that make up roughly 8% of the human genome. Our understanding of HERVs in physiology primarily surrounds their non-coding functions, while their protein coding capacity remains virtually uncharacterized. Therefore, we applied the bioinformatic pipeline "hervQuant" to high-resolution ribosomal profiling of healthy tissues to provide a comprehensive overview of translationally active HERVs. We find that HERVs account for 0.1-0.4% of all translation in distinct tissue-specific profiles. Collectively, our study further supports claims that HERVs are actively translated throughout healthy tissues to provide sequences of retroviral origin to the human proteome.
Keyphrases
  • endothelial cells
  • high resolution
  • induced pluripotent stem cells
  • gene expression
  • pluripotent stem cells
  • single cell
  • mass spectrometry
  • oxidative stress
  • dna methylation
  • dna repair
  • binding protein