| Budget Amount *help |
¥3,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,000,000)
Fiscal Year 2005: ¥1,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,300,000)
Fiscal Year 2004: ¥1,700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,700,000)
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| Research Abstract |
To understand the potential pathogenesis of Human Endogenous Retrovirus (HERV) and the related genes, we tried to identify HERVs which retain the transcriptional activities. By exploring the public nucleotide databases (dbEST. and nr) using BLAST program, 963 ESTs and 764 mRNAs are found to be worth for further analysis. To identify the active locus for these transcripts on human genome sequence (build 35.1), we performed BLAST analysis using in-house blast server and 24 candidate loci were revealed. To confirm the expression from these loci, RT-PCRs were carried out using the total RNAs from fetal brains. Finally, two loci on 1p36.13 and 5p15.33 were identified to have the potential transcriptional activity originated HERV (HUERS-P3b and HERVK9, respectively)
To estimate the potential role of HERVs for primate evolution, we tried to identify the dates for the integration events. A classical PCR strategy was used to characterize three HERVs including previously identified one on 21q22.3, which has the specific transcriptional activity in placenta. DNAs from Chimpanzee, Japanese Macaque, Rhesus monkey, Common Marmoset, Brown capuchin, Northern night monkey, Spider Monkey, and Senegal Bush Baby were tested along with human genomic DNAs as positive control. Amplified products for HUERS-P3b on 1p36.13 and HERVK9 on 5p15.33 were observed in both human and Chimpanzee. A member of HERVF (typeB) on 21q22.3 seems to be relatively recent insertion because no amplification was observed other than human. Further investigation based on the nucleotide sequences from PCR products are on its way.
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