Recombination analysis of human-tropic porcine endogenous retroviruses.

Prevention of cross-species infection of porcine endogenous retroviruses (PERV) is crucial for xenotransplantation. The potential risk of infection is caused by replication-competent PERV as well as by hybrid viruses derived from recombination events of distinct PERV genomes. Recently, human-tropic, replication-competent PERV genomes obtaining hybrid sequences have been observed. Here, complete polymorphism pattern analysis was performed on the full-length PERV gamma1 clones and on the complete envelope (env) gene sequences published to date. Several recombined full-length clones and a high number of different recombination patterns in the env gene were identified. In addition, recombinations with retroviral genomes not yet known were found. Thus, the potential risk of infection also exists for recombination products, including defective PERV loci.