Evidence map›Paper›PMID 15044706›Full record

ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2004

Long-term reinfection of the human genome by endogenous retroviruses.

Robert Belshaw, Vini Pereira, Aris Katzourakis, Gillian Talbot, Jan Paces, Austin Burt, Michael Tristem

Open access · greenAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2004. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 220 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
220citing papers in PubMed
20.4field-weighted citation impact, top 1% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

220 citing papers in PubMed, 418 citations in OpenAlex.

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  9. Structural and Evolutionary Analysis ofInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2025
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  14. Human Endogenous Retrovirus K in Astrocytes Is Altered in Parkinson's Disease.Movement disorders : official journal of the Movement Disorder Society · 2025
    Article
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160 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

7 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.

Robert BelshawDepartment of Biological Sciences, Imperial College at Silwood Park, Ascot, Berks SL5 7PY, United Kingdom. r.belshaw@imperial.ac.uk
Vini Pereira
Aris Katzourakis
Gillian Talbot
Jan Paces
Austin Burt
Michael Tristem
Czech Academy of Sciences, Institute of Molecular Genetics · CZ

Funding

Wellcome Trust
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Endogenous retrovirus (ERV) families are derived from their exogenous counterparts by means of a process of germ-line infection and proliferation within the host genome. Several families in the human and mouse genomes now consist of many hundreds of elements and, although several candidates have been proposed, the mechanism behind this proliferation has remained uncertain. To investigate this mechanism, we reconstructed the ratio of nonsynonymous to synonymous changes and the acquisition of stop codons during the evolution of the human ERV family HERV-K(HML2). We show that all genes, including the env gene, which is necessary only for movement between cells, have been under continuous purifying selection. This finding strongly suggests that the proliferation of this family has been almost entirely due to germ-line reinfection, rather than retrotransposition in cis or complementation in trans, and that an infectious pool of endogenous retroviruses has persisted within the primate lineage throughout the past 30 million years. Because many elements within this pool would have been unfixed, it is possible that the HERV-K(HML2) family still contains infectious elements at present, despite their apparent absence in the human genome sequence. Analysis of the env gene of eight other HERV families indicated that reinfection is likely to be the most common mechanism by which endogenous retroviruses proliferate in their hosts.

Indexed as

Genome, HumanEndogenous RetrovirusesHumansPhylogenyVirus Replication

Identifiers

PMID15044706
PMCPMC387345
OpenAlexW2024058880

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.