Cookies on this website

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you click 'Accept all cookies' we'll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies and you won't see this message again. If you click 'Reject all non-essential cookies' only necessary cookies providing core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility will be enabled. Click 'Find out more' for information on how to change your cookie settings.

The retroviral genus Lentivirus comprises retroviruses characterised from five mammalian orders. Lentiviruses typically undergo rapid rates of evolution, a feature that has allowed recent evolutionary relationships to be elucidated, but has also obscured their distant evolutionary past. However, the slowdown in the rate of evolution associated with genome invasion, as has occurred in the European rabbit, enables longer-term lentiviral evolutionary history to be inferred. Here we report the identification of orthologous RELIK proviruses in the European hare, demonstrating a minimum age of 12 million years for the lagomorph lentiviruses. This finding indicates an association between lentiviruses and their hosts covering much of the evolutionary history of the lagomorphs, and taking place within species with a worldwide distribution.

Original publication

DOI

10.1016/j.virol.2008.10.045

Type

Journal article

Journal

Virology

Publication Date

05/02/2009

Volume

384

Pages

7 - 11

Keywords

Animals, Base Sequence, Biological Evolution, Cell Line, Conserved Sequence, DNA, DNA, Viral, Endogenous Retroviruses, Genetic Variation, Hares, HeLa Cells, Humans, Lentivirus, Mammals, Molecular Sequence Data, Phylogeny, Polymerase Chain Reaction, Rabbits, Sequence Alignment, Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid