Virus-derived variation in diverse human genomes

Acquisition of genetic material from viruses by their hosts can generate inter-host structural genome variation. We developed computational tools enabling us to study virus-derived structural variants (SVs) in population-scale whole genome sequencing (WGS) datasets and applied them to 3,332 humans.

Although SVs had already been cataloged in these subjects, we found previously-overlooked virus-derived SVs. We detected somatic SVs present in the sequenced lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCLs) derived from squirrel monkey retrovirus (SMRV), human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV-1), and human T lymphotropic virus (HTLV-1); these variants are attributable to infection of LCLs or their progenitor cells and may impact gene expression results and the biosafety of experiments using these cells.

In addition, we detected new heritable SVs derived from human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6) and human endogenous retrovirus-K (HERV-K). We report the first solo-DR HHV-6 that likely to reflects rearrangement of a known full-length endogenous HHV-6. We used linkage disequilibrium between single nucleotide variants (SNVs) and variants in reads that align to HERV-K, which often cannot be mapped uniquely using conventional short-read sequencing analysis methods, to locate previously-unknown polymorphic HERV-K loci. Some of these loci are tightly linked to trait-associated SNVs, some are in complex genome regions inaccessible to prior methods, and some contain novel HERV-K haplotypes likely derived from gene conversion from an unknown source or introgression.

These tools and results broaden our perspective on the coevolution between viruses and humans, including ongoing virus-to-human gene transfer contributing to genetic variation between humans.