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Updated: Nov 8, 2025

Microarray-based Identification of Individual HERV Loci Expression: Application to Biomarker Discovery in Prostate Cancer
Published on: November 2, 2013
Human Endogenous Retroviruses as Biomedicine Markers
Yuhe Song1,2, Xiang Li2,3, Xiaoman Wei2,3,4
1School of Life Sciences, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, China.
Abstract:
Human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) were formed via ancient integration of exogenous retroviruses into the human genome and are considered to be viral "fossils". The human genome is embedded with a considerable amount of HERVs, witnessing the long-term evolutionary history of the viruses and the host. Most HERVs have lost coding capability during selection but still function in terms of HERV-mediated regulation of host gene expression. In this review, we summarize the roles of HERV activation in response to viral infections and diseases, and emphasize the potential use of HERVs as biomedicine markers in the early diagnosis of diseases such as cancer, which provides a new perspective for the clinical application of HERVs.
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