Biopolymers and cell. 1998; 14 (4): 286 - 297

Regional specificity of relroviral integration

A. V. Rynditch, S. V. Zoubak, L. O. Tsyba, N. Guley, Z. V. Lazurkevitch, G. Bernardi

The long-help general opinion was that retroviral integration into the cellular genome occurs at random and it is not clear how the local features of integration can be account for the pattern of integration over the whole genome. Using the compositional approach it was shown that viral integration takes place in some regions of the host genome which show a compositional match with viral sequences This regional specificity of retroviral integration has been demon¬strated by: (i) our experimental localization of a number of viral sequences integrated in different compositional genomic compar¬tments; (ii) results from other laboratories concerning the localiza- tion of retroviral sequences in open chromatin regions and/or next to CpG islands; (Hi) our compositional analysis of genes in the neihgborhood of integrated viral sequences. Such conclusion have, implications concerning the compositional evolution of retroviral genomes and gene therapy.