Nucleotide sequence analysis of a cloned DNA fragment from human cells reveals homology to retrotransposons.

During molecular cloning of proviral DNA of human spumaretrovirus, various recombinant clones were established and analyzed. Blot hybridization revealed that one of the recombinant plasmids had the characteristic features of a member of the long interspersed repetitive sequences family. The DNA element was analyzed by restriction mapping and nucleotide sequencing. It showed a high degree of amino acid sequence homology of 54.3% when compared with the 5'-terminal part of the pol gene product of the murine retrotransposon LIMd. The 3' region of the cloned DNA element encodes proteins with an even higher degree of homology of 67.4% in comparison to the corresponding parts of a member of the primate KpnI sequence family.