CONTRIBUTIONS OF
ENDOGENOUS LTRs TO TRANSCRIPTIONAL REGULATION OF HUMAN GENES
Dixie
L. Mager. Terry Fox Laboratory, BC Cancer Agency and Dept. of Medical Genetics,
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Through Laboratory screens
and genome-wide bioinformatics searches, we have identified numerous examples of
human genes that utilize an endogenous retroviral long terminal repeat (LTR) as
a transcriptional promoter or polyadenylation signal. In most cases, the LTR
promoter of the gene is one of several alternative promoters but, for some
genes, the LTR is the major or only known promoter. Thus, it is clear that some
retroviral LTRs have assumed important gene regulatory roles after integration
into the genome. Several examples of this phenomenon will be presented and the
potential significance of these findings will be discussed.