Paleovirus Reference Sequences

For each lentiviral paleovirus species, we have defined a 'master' reference sequence, as follows:

• Rabbit endogenous lentivirus K: (RELIK con)
• Prosimian immunodeficiency virus 1: (PSIV1-con)
• Prosimian immunodeficiency virus 2: (PSIV2-con)
• Mustelid endogenous lentivirus: (MELV)
• Dermopteran endogenous lentivirus: (DELV)
• Springhare endogenous lentivirus: (SpELV)

The paleovirus reference sequences represent the efforts of researchers to reconstruct, as closely as possible, the genomes of the ancestral lentiviruses that gave rise to ERV lineages. All reference sequences are linked to auxiliary data in tabular format.

We defined the known locations of lentivirus genome features on paleovirus reference sequences (see here).

Putative ancestral open reading frames (ORFs) encoding accessory genes have been identified in many endogenous lentiviruses. In some cases these represent clear homologs of the accessory genes found in exogenous lentiviruses, but in others it remains unclear whether they are homologs of previously described accessory genes or distinct genes. We therefore extended the set of lentivirus genome features defined in our core project to include these putatively distinct genes.