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Updated: Aug 9, 2025

Amplification, Next-generation Sequencing, and Genomic DNA Mapping of Retroviral Integration Sites
Published on: March 22, 2016
The Telomeric Repeats of HHV-6A Do Not Determine the Chromosome into Which the Virus Is Integrated
Aleksey V Kusakin1,2, Olga V Goleva1, Lavrentii G Danilov3
1Pediatric Research and Clinical Center for Infectious Diseases, 197022 St. Petersburg, Russia.
Abstract:
Human herpes virus 6A (HHV-6A) is able to integrate into the telomeric and subtelomeric regions of human chromosomes representing chromosomally integrated HHV-6A (ciHHV-6A). The integration starts from the right direct repeat (DRR) region. It has been shown experimentally that perfect telomeric repeats (pTMR) in the DRR region are required for the integration, while the absence of the imperfect telomeric repeats (impTMR) only slightly reduces the frequency of HHV-6 integration cases. The aim of this study was to determine whether telomeric repeats within DRR may define the chromosome into which the HHV-6A integrates. We analysed 66 HHV-6A genomes obtained from public databases. Insertion and deletion patterns of DRR regions were examined. We also compared TMR within the herpes virus DRR and human chromosome sequences retrieved from the Telomere-to-Telomere consortium. Our results show that telomeric repeats in DRR in circulating and ciHHV-6A have an affinity for all human chromosomes studied and thus do not define a chromosome for integration.
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