Expression and identification of HERV-W family in Japanese monkeys (Macaca fuscata).

We investigated structural genes (gag, pol, env) of HERV-W family in the Macaca fuscata (Japanese monkey). Those genes are expressed in various tissues (testis, prostate, kidney, cerebellum, thymus, pancreas, intestine, stomach, ovary) of the Japanese monkey in RT-PCR and sequencing analyses. Nine clones for gag, thirty-one clones for pol and thirty-four clones for env fragments of the HERV-W family in monkey tissues were identified and analyzed. These clones showed a high degree of sequence similarity, 82.2-84.7% for gag, 88.4-91.7% for pol, and 90.8-95.4% for env, to those of HERV-W family. Translation to amino acids in all clones derived from the monkey indicated that they showed multiple interruptions of frameshifts and termination codons by deletion/insertion or point mutation. Identical sequences from different tissues of the monkey were found in env and pol clones of the HERV-W family.