Abstract
Old World monkeys (OWM), simians inhabiting Africa and Asia, are currently affected by at least four infectious retroviruses, namely, simian foamy virus (SFV), simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), simian T-lymphotropic virus (STLV), and simian type D retrovirus (SRV). OWM also show chromosomal evidence of having been infected in the past with four more retroviral species, baboon endogenous virus (BaEV), Papio cynocephalus endogenous virus (PcEV), simian endogenous retrovirus (SERV), and Rhesus endogenous retrovirus-K (RhERV-K/SERV-K1). For some of the viruses, transmission to other primates still occurs, resulting, for instance, in the HIV pandemic. Retroviruses are intimately connected with their host as they are normally spread by close contact. In this review, an attempt to reconstruct the distribution and history of OWM retroviruses will be made. A literature overview of the species infected by any of the eight retroviruses as well as an age estimation of the pathogens will be given. In addition, primate genomes from databases have been re-analyzed for the presence of endogenous retrovirus integrations. Results suggest that some of the oldest retroviruses, SERV and PcEV, have travelled with their hosts to Asia during the Miocene, when a higher global temperature allowed simian expansions. In contrast, younger viruses, such as SIV and SRV, probably due to the lack of a primate continuum between the continents in later times, have been restricted to Africa and Asia, respectively.
Highlights
The primate fossil record suggests that the radiation of Old World monkeys (OWM)began in the Oligocene or early Miocene (around 25–30 million years ago), with the divergence of apes, including the ancestors of humans, and OWM
U85505; [38]), both full-length proviruses obtained from a Papio cynocephalus chromosomal DNA library, were used to identify endogenous Papio cynocephalus endogenous virus (PcEV) and simian endogenous retrovirus (SERV) nucleotide sequences in OWM genomes from GenBank and Ensembl databases by similarity search using the BLASTn/BLAT
Default settings were used in the NCBI BLASTn search, as the aim of the research was to retrieve and describe PcEV, SERV and baboon endogenous virus (BaEV) integrations, and not more distantly related endogenous viruses, searches were optimized for “highly similar sequences”
Summary
Began in the Oligocene or early Miocene (around 25–30 million years ago (mya)), with the divergence of apes, including the ancestors of humans, and OWM (reviewed in [1], see [2,3,4]). Over the course of evolution, retroviruses have been infecting primate species. Retroviruses originate from the long terminal repeat (LTR)containing retrotransposons found in eukaryotic genomes, by the addition of an envelope (env) gene [6,7]. One such LTR-retroelement, HERV-L, has similarity to foamy viruses in its polymerase (pol) gene [8]
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