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Volume: 6 Issue: 4 November 2008 - Supplement - 1

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NATURE OF HUMAN ENDOGENOUS RETROVIRUSES AND THEIR ROLE IN ORGAN TRANSPLANTATION

Current data suggest that Human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) elements are active in human cells in a tissue-specific manner. The greatest HERVs activity was found in mRNA prepared from skin, thyroid gland, placenta and tissues of reproductive organs. HERVs are suspected of involvement in some autoimmune diseases, HELLP syndrome, multiple sclerosis, pre-eclampsia, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, melanoma and melanoma cell lines in vitro, systemic lupus erythematosus, Sjogren’s disease, type 1 diabetes and possibility in a wide range of other syndromes. HERVs are remnants of ancient germ line infections with exogenous retroviruses that have been genetically fixed and transmitted in a Mendelian fashion and are suspected of involvement in some human diseases as mentioned above. To investigate the possible role HERVs in human proteome randomly the LTRs of more than 100 HERV have been isolated from genomic DNA and from RNA transcripts and examined their activity using molecular assay such as Micro array, RT-PCR and Northern blotting. The results indicate that a major HERV activity was found in mRNA prepared from skin, placenta, thyroid gland and tissues of reproductive organs. In contrast, only few active HERVs were detectable in muscle cell RNA. A characteristic brain-specific retroviral activity profile was found that consists of members of the class I families HERV-E, HERV-F, and ERV9 and members of HERV-K taxa. In addition to these constitutively expressed HERVs, a number of differentially active HERV elements were identified in all brain samples independent of the disease pattern that may reflect differences in the genetic background of the tested individuals. In conclusion human tissues that lack HERV transcription could not be found, confirming that human endogenous retroviruses are permanent components of the human transcriptome. We emphasize for future additional work to studies for this element expression and HERVs mRNA transcription to understand the effective factors for expression HERVs between mentioned diseases disorders population.



Volume : 6
Issue : 4
Pages : 83


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Biotechnology Research Center., Endocrine & metabolite diseases Research Center., Infectious & Tropical Diseases Research Center., Oncology & Hematology Research Center., Faculty of Medicine, Tabriz Uni. Of Med. Sci., Tabriz, Iran