ArticleThe EMBO journal2026
Co-evolving infectivity and expression patterns drive the diversification of endogenous retroviruses.
Article in The EMBO journal, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Lifestyles ofProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Article
- Host-transposable element coexistence: a matter of resistance, tolerance and trade-off.The EMBO journal · 2026Review
- Retrovirus insertions in host transcripts trigger de novo piRNA immunity.The EMBO journal · 2026Article
- A reference genome for cultured Drosophila ovarian somatic cells enables studies of transposon and piRNA biology.Genome biology · 2026Article
- Conserved but mechanistically diverse piRNA defence against endogenous retroviruses in insects.EMBO reports · 2026Article
- EMBO Press co-evolves with molecular ecology and evolutionary biology.The EMBO journal · 2026Article
- The making and breaking of insect endogenous retroviruses.The EMBO journal · 2026Article
- PervasivebioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Recent horizontal transfer of transposable elements inbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- A second genetic screen for gurken mRNA mislocalisation uncovers novel phenotypes of piRNA pathway mutants in Drosophila.Biology open · 2025Article
- The ongoing invasion of the endogenous retrovirusbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- An endogenous retroviral element co-opts an upstream regulatory sequence to achieve somatic expression and mobility.Nucleic acids research · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Transposable elements are major contributors to the evolution of their hosts, but the mechanisms driving their own diversification remain poorly understood. Here, we reveal key principles governing the evolution of insect endogenous retroviruses (ERVs), a class of infectious LTR-retrotransposons that encode an Envelope protein. Through comparative analyses and experimental studies of transposon replication cycles in Drosophila, we demonstrate how two crucial ERV traits-infectivity and spatiotemporal expression-co-evolve. We find that ERVs have adapted their cis-regulatory sequences to function across all ovarian cell types. Strikingly, infectious ERV lineages display distinct expression patterns in somatic cells, from where they infect the germline, whereas derived retroelement lineages that have lost infectivity are expressed exclusively in the germline. Co-evolutionary changes in the piRNA pathway, which integrates transposon promoter and sequence information into differentially expressed piRNA clusters, highlight the functional significance of the diverse ERV expression niches. By investigating a unique ERV lineage, rover, we reconstruct the molecular events that transformed an infectious ERV into a retroelement. Overall, our study uncovers fundamental mechanisms that drive the co-evolution of ERVs and their hosts, with important implications for understanding the functional diversification of LTR sequences.
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