Abstract
Recent evidence indicates that foamy viruses (FVs) are the oldest retroviruses (RVs) that we know and coevolved with their hosts for several hundred million years. This coevolution may have contributed to the non-pathogenicity of FVs, an important factor in development of foamy viral vectors in gene therapy. However, various questions on the molecular evolution of FVs remain still unanswered. The analysis of the spectrum of animal species infected by exogenous FVs or harboring endogenous FV elements in their genome is pivotal. Furthermore, animal studies might reveal important issues, such as the identification of the FV in vivo target cells, which than require a detailed characterization, to resolve the molecular basis of the accuracy with which FVs copy their genome. The issues of the extent of FV viremia and of the nature of the virion genome (RNA vs. DNA) also need to be experimentally addressed.
Highlights
Retroviruses have gained a lot of general interest, because of the devastating human AIDS pandemic over the last 35 years, making HIV one of the best-studied viruses of all times
The most prevalent of all retroviruses (RVs) are probably spumaretroviruses, a subfamily of RVs that has attracted altogether a group of approximately only 250 researchers from 10–15 labs worldwide over the same period of 35 years. This life in a scientific niche is illustrated by the fact that while the PubMed database lists more than 330,000 items for the search criteria “HIV or AIDS”, the hits are only around 1,000 for
Given the distinct replication pathways and probably different in vivo target cells between orthoretroviruses and spumaretroviruses, a recombination event between these viruses belonging to distinct retroviral subfamilies appears very unlikely
Summary
Retroviruses have gained a lot of general interest, because of the devastating human AIDS pandemic over the last 35 years, making HIV one of the best-studied viruses of all times. The most prevalent of all retroviruses (RVs) are probably spumaretroviruses (or foamy viruses), a subfamily of RVs that has attracted altogether a group of approximately only 250 researchers from 10–15 labs worldwide over the same period of 35 years. This life in a scientific niche is illustrated by the fact that while the PubMed database lists more than 330,000 items for the search criteria “HIV or AIDS”, the hits are only around 1,000 for “foamy virus”. In terms of evolutionary success and genome stability, no RV compares to FVs, as suggested by a number of recent studies
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