Human Endogenous Retrovirus Database

Retroviral genomes or parts of their genomes are present in the DNA of many organisms. Studies of endogenous retroviral nucleotide sequences have become an important part of contemporary retrovirology as well as of molecular and cellular biology and genomics. Human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) are of special interest also because their expression may be associated with several diseases, including cancer. Various groups of HERVs have been reported in the human genome. Their number can range from one copy to many thousand copies.

This database is compiled from the human genome nucleotide sequences obtained mostly in the Human Genome Projects. We created a relatively simple and fast environment for screening human genome for HERVs. This makes it possible to continuously improve classification and characterization of retroviral families. The HERV database now contains retroviruses from more than 90 % of the human genome.

Start your search by clicking on the Search link below. You can search by HERV families, chromosome positions and several other features. For explanation of abbreviations click on Help. The Fasta search or Blat search are used for comparing your nucleotide sequence against all HERVs in the database. For abbreviations click on Help. An example of using the database is given below, click Example to check.

• Search in database
• Fasta search against all identified HERVs
• BLAT search against all identified HERVs (DNA or protein search)
• Example how can be HERV database used
• Links
• News
• Help
• Comments to 1999 Nature article about chromosome 22

References: Paces J, Pavlicek A, Paces V. HERVd: database of human endogenous retroviruses. Nucleic Acids Res. 2002 Jan 1;30(1):205-6. Medline Full text at NAR
Jan Paces, Adam Pavlicek, Radek Zika, Vladimir V. Kapitonov, Jerzy Jurka, and Vaclav Paces: HERVd: the Human Endogenous RetroViruses Database: update Nucl. Acids. Res. 2004 32: D50 Full text at NAR

Contacts: Jan Paces, Adam Pavlicek and Radek Zika