Human endogenous retroviruses in development and disease

Jian Mao; Qian Zhang; Yu-Sheng Cong

doi:10.1016/j.csbj.2021.10.037

Human endogenous retroviruses in development and disease

Comput Struct Biotechnol J. 2021 Nov 2:19:5978-5986. doi: 10.1016/j.csbj.2021.10.037. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Jian Mao¹, Qian Zhang¹, Yu-Sheng Cong¹

Affiliation

¹ Key Laboratory of Aging and Cancer Biology of Zhejiang Province, Hangzhou Normal University School of Basic Medical Sciences, Hangzhou, China.

Abstract

Human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) represent ∼8% of human genome, deriving from exogenous retroviral infections of germ line cells occurred millions of years ago and being inherited by the offspring in a Mendelian fashion. Most of HERVs are nonprotein-coding because of the accumulation of mutations, insertions, deletions, and/or truncations. It has been long thought that HERVs were "junk DNA". However, it is now known that HERVs are involved in various biological processes through encoding proteins, acting as promoters/enhancers, or lncRNAs to affect human health and disease. In this review, we summarized recent findings about HERVs, with implications in embryonic development, pluripotency, cancer, aging, and neurodegenerative diseases.

Keywords: Aging; Cancer; Embryonic development and pluripotency; Human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs); Neurodegenerative diseases.

Publication types

Review