Author:
Dopkins Nicholas,Singh Bhavya,Michael Stephanie,Zhang Panpan,Marston Jez L.,Fei Tongyi,Singh Manvendra,Feschotte Cedric,Collins Nicholas,Bendall Matthew L.,Nixon Douglas F.
Abstract
AbstractHuman endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) are the germline embedded proviral fragments of ancient retroviral infections that make up roughly 8% of the human genome. Our understanding of HERVs in physiology primarily surrounds their non-coding functions, while their protein coding capacity remains virtually uncharacterized. Therefore, we applied the bioinformatic pipeline “hervQuant” to high-resolution ribosomal profiling of healthy tissues to provide a comprehensive overview of translationally active HERVs. We find that HERVs account for 0.1–0.4% of all translation in distinct tissue-specific profiles. Collectively, our study further supports claims that HERVs are actively translated throughout healthy tissues to provide sequences of retroviral origin to the human proteome.
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC