ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2005
Syncytin-A and syncytin-B, two fusogenic placenta-specific murine envelope genes of retroviral origin conserved in Muridae.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2005. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 164 papers.
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164 citing papers in PubMed, 366 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Trophoblast Fusion in Hypertensive Disorders of Pregnancy and Preeclampsia.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Review
- Activation of endogenous retroviruses characterizes the maternal-fetal interface in the BTBR mouse model of autism spectrum disorder.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Cell-Int: a cell-cell interaction assay to identify native membrane protein interactions.Life science alliance · 2024Article
- Sodium-dependent phosphate transporter PiT1/SLC20A1 as the receptor for the endogenous retroviral envelope syncytin-B involved in mouse placenta formation.Journal of virology · 2024Article
- TFEB safeguards trophoblast syncytialization in humans and mice.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Different Host-Endogenous Retrovirus Relationships between Mammals and Birds Reflected in Genome-Wide Evolutionary Interaction Patterns.Genome biology and evolution · 2024Article
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- The GATA transcriptional program dictates cell fate equilibrium to establish the maternal-fetal exchange interface and fetal development.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
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- Virus-Induced Cell Fusion and Syncytia Formation.Results and problems in cell differentiation · 2024Article
104 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Recently, we and others have identified two human endogenous retroviruses that entered the primate lineage 25-40 million years ago and that encode highly fusogenic retroviral envelope proteins (syncytin-1 and -2), possibly involved in the formation of the placenta syncytiotrophoblast layer generated by trophoblast cell fusion at the materno-fetal interface. A systematic in silico search throughout mouse genome databases presently identifies two fully coding envelope genes, present as unique copies and unrelated to any known murine endogenous retrovirus, that we named syncytin-A and -B. Quantitative RT-PCR demonstrates placenta-specific expression for both genes, with increasing transcript levels in this organ from 9.5 to 14.5 days postcoitum. In situ hybridization of placenta cryosections further localizes these transcripts in the syncytiotrophoblast-containing labyrinthine zona. Consistently, we show that both genes can trigger cell-cell fusion in ex vivo transfection assays, with distinct cell type specificities suggesting different receptor usage. Genes orthologous to syncytin-A and -B and disclosing a striking conservation of their coding status are found in all Muridae tested (mouse, rat, gerbil, vole, and hamster), dating their entry into the rodent lineage approximately 20 million years ago. Together, these data strongly argue for a critical role of syncytin-A and -B in murine syncytiotrophoblast formation, thus unraveling a rather unique situation where two pairs of endogenous retroviruses, independently acquired by the primate and rodent lineages, would have been positively selected for a convergent physiological role.
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