The study provides evidence that the HERV-K(HML-2) family may code for infectious viral particles capable of replication by reinfection in HIV-1 positive patients.
Evidence for infectious HERV-K in HIV-1; hypothesis-generating and requires prospective validation before any clinical consideration.
Results Type-1 and Type-2 HERV-K(HML-2) were co-amplified. Phylogenetic analyses revealed frequent detection of inter and intra-subtype HERV-K(HML-2) recombinant env sequences. Type-1 but not type-2 env sequences were mostly edited at specific sites, originating a unique hypermutated consensus sequence (K111), which cluster in a unique phylogenetic branch. HERV-K sequences less than 98% similar to known proviruses suggest that these proviruses are unfixed. dN/dS ratios < 1 strongly suggested that HERV-K replicated by reinfection, which may explain the finding of putative HERV-K recombinant and hypermutated sequences. Conclusion Our data suggest that the HERV-K(HML-2) family code for infectious viral particles. RNA recombination could serve to efficiently remove mutated HERV-K alleles by combining intact parts of different genomes from 2006 International Meeting of The Institute of Human Virology Baltimore, USA. 17–21 November, 2006
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Contreras-Galindo et al. (2006) studied this question.
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