The database has left the internet!

After a long time, we decided to take retrosearch off the internet. Retrosearch was outdated (built on hg16) and was missing quite a few loci found in later version of the human genome.

We do not expect to put the updated version of the annotated HERV loci online anytime soon. If you have an interest in HERVs and using the annotation for e.g. RNAseq studies (or other NGS studies) you can contact me directly (details below).

We are happy to collaborate and we are broadly interested in HERVs and their expression in various diseases and tissues using both NGS and proteomics data.

Contact information

Palle Villesen, Ph.D. - palle [at] birc.au.dk
Bioinformatics Research Centre
The University of Aarhus
Build. 1110, CF Moellers Alle 8
DK - 8000 Aarhus C
Denmark

References (pdf versions)

Villesen P, Aagaard L, Wiuf C, Pedersen FS (2004) Identification of endogenous retroviral reading frames in the human genome. Retrovirology. Oct 11;1(1):32

Aagaard L*, Villesen P*, Kjelbjerg AL*, Pedersen FS (2005) The ~30-million-year-old ERVPb1 envelope gene is evolutionarily conserved among hominoids and Old World monkeys. Genomics 86 685 – 691 (*equal contribution)

Kjelbjerg AL*, Villesen P*, Aagaard L, Pedersen FS (2005) Gene conversion and purifying selection of a placenta-specific ERV-V envelope gene during simian evolution BMC Evolutionary Biology 2008, 8:266 (*equal contribution)

Dansk populærvidenskabelig information omkring HERV:

Aagaard L, Villesen P Din indre virus - den gode, den onde og den helt ukendte Jyllandsposten, Indblik. Søndag d. 27. marts 2005. (Også trykt i Aktuel Naturvidenskab) Online: Jyllandsposten

Aagaard L, Villesen P Din indre virus - den gode, den onde og den helt ukendte Aktuel Naturvidenskab. 2004, nr. 6.