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Updated: Jun 7, 2026

Microarray-based Identification of Individual HERV Loci Expression: Application to Biomarker Discovery in Prostate Cancer
Published on: November 2, 2013
Evidence for endogenous retroviruses in human chemokine receptor gene introns: possible evolutionary inferences and
Maria Antonietta Panaro1, Rosa Calvello, Carlo Ivan Mitolo
1CIMAOL, University of Bari, Italy. ma.panaro@anatomia.uniba.it
Abstract:
The human chemokine receptor (CKR) genes CCR2, CCR6, CCR7, CCR9, CCR10, CXCR4, and CXCR5 harbor one or two introns. CCR7, CCR9, CCR10, and CXCR5 introns, (but not CCR2, CCR6, and CXCR4 introns) encompass retrovirus-like inserts with the characteristics of SINEs (short interspersed nuclear elements) up to 300 nucleotides (nt) long. Other characteristic elements of the retroviral genome, such as long terminal repeats and gag, pol, and env genes, are lacking. The inserts likely derived from one (or more) of the following retroviruses: XA34 (NCBI GenBank Nucleotides, U29659), HERV-P-T47D (AF087913), ERV FTD (U27241), HERV-K (Y17832), HML6p (U86698), HERV-H/env60 (AJ289710), XA38 (U37066). Virus-like inserts are remarkably homogeneous in all CKR introns, with nt identities of about 80%. Percentages of nt identities between the CKR inserts and the corresponding viral sequences are also about 80%. With reference to the CKR sequence, the viral sequence aligns in some instances Plus/Plus (XA34, HML6p, HERV-H/env60, and XA38) and in other instances Plus/Minus (HERV-P-T47D, ERV FTD, and HERV-K). Some aspects of the evolution of retroviruses and CKRs as well as hypotheses on the biological significance of the SINE inserts are discussed.
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