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Transposable elements

A pluripotency role for a retroviral element

Nature Reviews Genetics volume 15, page 291 (2014)Cite this article

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Human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) are kept silent to a large extent to minimize retrotransposition and genomic instability. Lu et al. studied the HERV-H subfamily, which are selectively re-expressed in embryonic stem cells. They found that HERV-H knockdown induced differentiation, indicating that HERV-H expression has an active and useful role in maintaining pluripotency. Mechanistic investigations revealed that HERV-H transcripts bind to OCT4 and co-activators to contribute to a pluripotency-associated transcriptional network.

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References

  1. Lu, X. et al. The retrovirus HERVH is a long noncoding RNA required for human embryonic stem cell identity. Nature Struct. Mol. Biol. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nsmb.2799 (2014)

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  1. Darren J. Burgess
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Burgess, D. A pluripotency role for a retroviral element. Nat Rev Genet 15, 291 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg3733

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