Human endogenous retroviruses in development and disease

Human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) represent similar to 8% of human genome, deriving from exogenous retroviral infections of germ line cells occurred millions of years ago and being inherited by the offspring in a Mendelian fashion. Most of HERVs are nonprotein-coding because of the accumulation of mutations, insertions, deletions, and/or truncations. It has been long thought that HERVs were junk DNA. However, it is now known that HERVs are involved in various biological processes through encoding proteins, acting as promoters/enhancers, or lncRNAs to affect human health and disease. In this review, we summarized recent findings about HERVs, with implications in embryonic development, pluripotency, cancer, aging, and neurodegenerative diseases. (C) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Research Network of Computational and Structural Biotechnology.

Automated summary

HERVs make up about 8% of the human genome, originating from exogenous retroviral infections millions of years ago and inherited by offspring. While most HERVs are nonprotein-coding, they play important roles in human health and disease by encoding proteins, acting as promoters/enhancers, or lncRNAs.