Abstract
Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) are the evolutionary remnants of retroviral germline infections, which are no longer capable of intercellular infectivity. Despite being confined within the genomes of their hosts, ERVs are able to replicate and spread via retrotransposition. This replicative process helps to ensure the elements’ proliferation and long term evolutionary success, but it also imposes a substantial mutational burden on their host genomes. Accordingly, host organisms have evolved a variety of mechanisms to repress ERV transposition, including epigenetic mechanisms based on the modification of chromatin. In particular, DNA methylation and histone modifications are used to silence ERV transcription thereby mitigating their ability cause mutations via transposition. It has recently become apparent that epigenetic and chromatin based regulation of ERVs can also exert substantial regulatory effects on host genes. In this chapter, we provide a number of examples illustrating how chromatin modifications of ERV insertions relate to host gene regulation including both deleterious cases as well as exapted cases whereby epigenetically activated ERV elements provide functional utility to their host genomes via the provisioning of novel regulatory sequences. For example, we discuss ERV-derived promoter and enhancer sequences in the human genome that are epigenetically modified in a cell-type specific manner to help drive differential expression of host genes. The genomic abundance of ERVs, taken together with their proximity to host genes and their propensity to be epigenetically modified, suggest that this kind of phenomenon may be far more common than previously imagined. Furthermore, the environmental responsiveness of epigenetic pathways suggests the possibility that ERVs, along with other classes of epigenetically modified TEs, may serve to coordinately modify host gene regulatory programs in response to environmental challenges.
Keywords
- Histone Modification
- Host Gene
- Reverse Transcriptase Sequence
- Transposable Element Insertion
- Agouti Gene
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Conley, A.B., Jordan, I.K. (2012). Endogenous Retroviruses and the Epigenome. In: Witzany, G. (eds) Viruses: Essential Agents of Life. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4899-6_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4899-6_16
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