Tuyển tập các báo cáo nghiên cứu về y học được đăng trên tạp chí y học quốc tế cung cấp cho các bạn kiến thức về ngành y đề tài: The discovery of endogenous retroviruses. | Retrovirology BioMed Central Review The discovery of endogenous retroviruses Robin A Weiss Address Division of Infection Immunity University College London 46 Cleveland Street London W1T 4JF UK Email Robin A Weiss - Corresponding author Open Access Published 03 October 2006 Retrovirology 2006 3 67 doi 1742-4690-3-67 Received 03 August 2006 Accepted 03 October 2006 This article is available from http content 3 1 67 2006 Weiss licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http licenses by which permits unrestricted use distribution and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract When endogenous retroviruses ERV were discovered in the late 1960s the Mendelian inheritance of retroviral genomes by their hosts was an entirely new concept. Indeed Howard M Temin s DNA provirus hypothesis enunciated in 1964 was not generally accepted and reverse transcriptase was yet to be discovered. Nonetheless the evidence that we accrued in the pre-molecular era has stood the test of time and our hypothesis on ERV which one reviewer described as impossible proved to be correct. Here I recount some of the key observations in birds and mammals that led to the discovery of ERV and comment on their evolution cross-species dispersion and what remains to be elucidated. Background If Charles Darwin reappeared today he might be surprised to learn that humans are descended from viruses as well as from apes. Some 8 of human DNA represents fossil retroviral genomes and that is not counting the LINE elements and other retrotransposons that are scattered so liberally across our genome 1 2 . Darwin might be reassured that we share most though not all of these insertions with chimpanzees 3 4 . But how did endogenous viruses first come to light The discovery of ERV took place in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
