ArticleImmunogenetics1995
Complement component C4 gene intron 9 as a phylogenetic marker for primates: long terminal repeats of the endogenous retrovirus ERV-K(C4) are a molecular clock of evolution.
Article in Immunogenetics, 1995. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 48 papers.
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48 citing papers in PubMed, 108 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Mutation Rate Variation and Other Challenges in 2-LTR Dating of Primate Endogenous Retrovirus Integrations.Journal of molecular evolution · 2025Review
- Evolutionary conservation of an ancient retroviralJournal of virology · 2023Article
- Transposon signatures of allopolyploid genome evolution.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Identification of Cartilaginous Fish Endogenous Foamy Virus Rooting to Vertebrate Counterparts.Journal of virology · 2023Article
- Cross-species transmission of an ancient endogenous retrovirus and convergent co-option of its envelope gene in two mammalian orders.PLoS genetics · 2022Article
- Analysis of Simian Endogenous Retrovirus (SERV) Full-Length Proviruses in Old World Monkey Genomes.Genes · 2022Article
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- Multiple Infiltration and Cross-Species Transmission of Foamy Viruses across the Paleozoic to the Cenozoic Era.Journal of virology · 2021Article
- The Genomic Landscape of Centromeres in Cancers.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Identification and evolution of avian endogenous foamy viruses.Virus evolution · 2019Article
- Origins and evolutionary consequences of ancient endogenous retroviruses.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2019Review
- Origin of the retroviruses: when, where, and how?Current opinion in virology · 2017Review
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The complement component C4 genes of Old World primates exhibit a long/short dichotomous size variation, except that chimpanzee and gorilla only contain short C4 genes. In human it has been shown that the long C4 gene is attributed to the integration of an endogenous retrovirus, HERV-K(C4), into intron 9. This 6.36 kilobase retroviral element is absent in short C4 genes. Here it is shown that the homologous endogenous retrovirus, ERV-K(C4), is present precisely at the same position in the long C4 gene of orangutan and African green monkey. Determination of the short C4 gene intron 9 sequences from human, three apes, two Old World monkeys, and a New World monkey allowed the establishment of consistent phylogenetic trees for primates, which favors a chimpanzee-gorilla clade. The 5' long terminal repeats (LTR) and 3' LTR of ERV-K(C4) in long C4 genes of human, orangutan, and African green monkey have similar sequence divergence values of 9.1%-10.5%. These values are more than five-fold higher than the sequence divergence of the homologous intron 9 sequences between the long and short C4 genes in higher primates. The latter is probably a result of homogenization or concerted evolution. We suggest that the 5' LTR and 3' LTR of an endogenous retrovirus can serve as a reliable reference point or a molecular clock for studies of gene duplication and gene evolution. This is because the 5'/3' LTR sequences were identical at the time of retroviral integration and evolved independently of each other afterwards. Our data provides strong evidence for the short C4 gene being the ancestral form in primates, trans-species evolution, and the "slow-down" phenomenon of the sequence divergence in great apes.
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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.