<p>This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.</p> <p>Humans share about 99% of their genomic DNA with chimpanzees and bonobos; thus, the differences between these species are unlikely to be in gene content but could be
caused by inherited changes in regulatory systems. Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs)
comprise ∼ 5% of the human genome. The LTRs of ERVs contain many regulatory
sequences, such as promoters, enhancers, polyadenylation signals and factor-binding
sites. Thus, they can influence the expression of nearby human genes. All known
human-specific LTRs belong to the HERV-K (human ERV) family, the most active
family in the human genome. It is likely that some of these ERVs could have integrated
into regulatory regions of the human genome, and therefore could have had an impact
on the expression of adjacent genes, which have consequently contributed to human
evolution. This review discusses possible functional consequences of ERV integration
in active coding regions.</p>
[]
Comp Funct Genomics. 2002 Dec; 3(6):494-498