NIH R01 · 2025
The role of the endogenous retroviral family, IAP, in placentation.
ABSTRACT Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) constitute 10% of all genomes, yet they remain the wild west of biology, even though they function within the host cell in a myriad of critical ways, including as regulatory elements, as extracellular messengers, as sources of viral-like particles (VLPs), and, importantly, as somatic mutagens. Our overreaching goal is to understand how the ERV family, IAP (Intracisternal type A Protein), functions at the mouse maternal-fetal interface. Thousands of genomic IAP instances exist that consist of gag, pro, pol sequences flanked by LTRs. These instances have lost the ancestral envelope (env) sequence and form naked VLPs that remain inside the cell and can…
From the public funding record at NIH RePORTER. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.