The Molecular Analysis of Retroelements Present in Avians

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

By using PCR primers derived from a highly conserved region of the retrovirus reverse transcriptase gene, a wide variety of retroelements were identified in the avian genome which was thought to lack any retroelements except for several families of endogenous retroviruses. Bsed on the results from sequence and Southern blot hybridization analyses, these novel retroelements can be divided into retroelements which are linked to a viral gene, most likely the gag gene, and another group of sequences which are not detectably linked to other viral genes. Therefore, these retroelements were classified into viral and nonviral elements. This classification of retroelements may facilitate the development of an evolutionary relationship to present retroviral sequences.