An Endogenous Foamy-like Viral Element in the Coelacanth Genome
Author Summary The deep history of retroviruses is still obscure. Retroviruses can leave integrated copies within their hosts' genomes, providing a fossil record for studying their long-term evolution. Endogenous forms of foamy viruses, complex retroviruses known to infect only mammalian species, appear to be extremely rare, so far found only in sloths and the aye-aye. Here, we report the discovery of endogenous foamy virus-like insertions within the genome of a so-called ‘living fossil’, the coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae). We provide evidence suggesting that foamy viruses and their hosts share a coevolutionary history of more than 407 million years, and that foamy viruses accompanied their vertebrate hosts on the evolutionary transition from water to land. These findings indicate that the retroviruses originated in the primeval ocean millions of years ago.
28 Jun 2012 ... Sum of Facebook and Twitter activity. ... E-mail: guanzhu@email.arizona.edu ( GZH); worobey@email.arizona.edu (MW). Affiliation Department ...