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Anthropoid primate-specific retroviral element THE1B controls expression of CRH in placenta and alters gestation length.

ABSTRACT: Pregnancy and parturition are intricately regulated to ensure successful reproductive outcomes. However, the factors that control gestational length in humans and other anthropoid primates remain poorly defined. Here, we show the endogenous retroviral long terminal repeat transposon-like human element 1B (THE1B) selectively controls placental expression of corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) that, in turn, influences gestational length and birth timing. Placental expression of CRH and subsequently prolonged gestational length were found in two independent strains of transgenic mice carrying a 180-kb human bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) DNA that contained the full length of CRH and extended flanking regions, including THE1B. Restricted deletion of THE1B silenced placental CRH expression and normalized birth timing in these transgenic lines. Furthermore, we revealed an interaction at the 5' insertion site of THE1B with distal-less homeobox 3 (DLX3), a transcription factor expressed in placenta. Together, these findings suggest that retroviral insertion of THE1B into the anthropoid primate genome may have initiated expression of CRH in placental syncytiotrophoblasts via DLX3 and that this placental CRH is sufficient to alter the timing of birth.

SUBMITTER: Dunn-Fletcher CE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6166974 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Anthropoid primate-specific retroviral element THE1B controls expression of CRH in placenta and alters gestation length.

Dunn-Fletcher Caitlin E CE Muglia Lisa M LM Pavlicev Mihaela M Wolf Gernot G Sun Ming-An MA Hu Yueh-Chiang YC Huffman Elizabeth E Tumukuntala Shivani S Thiele Katri K Mukherjee Amrita A Zoubovsky Sandra S Zhang Xuzhe X Swaggart Kayleigh A KA Lamm Katherine Y Bezold KYB Jones Helen H Macfarlan Todd S TS Muglia Louis J LJ

PLoS biology 20180919 9

Pregnancy and parturition are intricately regulated to ensure successful reproductive outcomes. However, the factors that control gestational length in humans and other anthropoid primates remain poorly defined. Here, we show the endogenous retroviral long terminal repeat transposon-like human element 1B (THE1B) selectively controls placental expression of corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) that, in turn, influences gestational length and birth timing. Placental expression of CRH and subseque ...[more]

PMID: 30231016

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Project description:BACKGROUND: The parasitic sucking lice of primates are known to have undergone at least 25 million years of coevolution with their hosts. For example, chimpanzee lice and human head/body lice last shared a common ancestor roughly six million years ago, a divergence that is contemporaneous with their hosts. In an assemblage where lice are often highly host specific, humans host two different genera of lice, one that is shared with chimpanzees and another that is shared with gorillas. In this study, we reconstruct the evolutionary history of primate lice and infer the historical events that explain the current distribution of these lice on their primate hosts. RESULTS: Phylogenetic and cophylogenetic analyses suggest that the louse genera Pediculus and Pthirus are each monophyletic, and are sister taxa to one another. The age of the most recent common ancestor of the two Pediculus species studied matches the age predicted by host divergence (ca. 6 million years), whereas the age of the ancestor of Pthirus does not. The two species of Pthirus (Pthirus gorillae and Pthirus pubis) last shared a common ancestor ca. 3-4 million years ago, which is considerably younger than the divergence between their hosts (gorillas and humans, respectively), of approximately 7 million years ago. CONCLUSION: Reconciliation analysis determines that there are two alternative explanations that account for the current distribution of anthropoid primate lice. The more parsimonious of the two solutions suggests that a Pthirus species switched from gorillas to humans. This analysis assumes that the divergence between Pediculus and Pthirus was contemporaneous with the split (i.e., a node of cospeciation) between gorillas and the lineage leading to chimpanzees and humans. Divergence date estimates, however, show that the nodes in the host and parasite trees are not contemporaneous. Rather, the shared coevolutionary history of the anthropoid primates and their lice contains a mixture of evolutionary events including cospeciation, parasite duplication, parasite extinction, and host switching. Based on these data, the coevolutionary history of primates and their lice has been anything but parsimonious.

Dataset Information

Anthropoid primate-specific retroviral element THE1B controls expression of CRH in placenta and alters gestation length.

Publications

Anthropoid primate-specific retroviral element THE1B controls expression of CRH in placenta and alters gestation length.

Similar Datasets

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