Genital papillomaviruses (PVs) and epidermodysplasia verruciformis PVs occur in the same monkey species: implications for PV evolution.

Portions of the genome from two different papillomaviruses (PVs) of the Abyssinian Colobus monkey were sequenced and phylogenetically analyzed. This revealed that the major evolutionary separation between genital PVs and epidermodysplasia verruciformis-associated PVs (EV-PVs) hitherto found only in human papillomaviruses (HPVs) also exists in animal PVs. The sequence of the long control region (LCR) of Colobus monkey PV type 2 (CgPV-2) reveals a small size and an arrangement of potential cis-responsive elements typical of the EV-HPVs; namely four binding sites for the viral E2 protein, with one of them being located within the L1 gene, a cluster of nuclear factor I (NFI)- and AP-1-binding sites and a 50-bp sequence upstream of the E6 gene consisting only of the nucleotides A and T. This level of conservation of functional elements within the highly variable LCR suggests that CgPV-2 could be adopted as a model for studying human skin cancer associated with EV-HPVs. Although isolated from the same monkey species, the other Colobus monkey PV, CgPV-1, is a typical genital PV as shown by E1 and L1 sequence comparisons. The presence of these two major phylogenetic divisions of PVs in both human and monkey hosts strongly suggests that this diversification predated the evolutionary split between monkeys and apes. In other words, at least two different groups of PVs have been evolving separately in their respective primate hosts for more than 22 million years with only moderate sequence changes since their genesis.