On the stability of sequences inserted into viral genomes

Willemsen, Anouk; Zwart, Mark P

A. Willemsen and M. P. Zwart | 9 2.7.1 Wild viruses In contrast to the retroviruses (group VI), the genome replication of the Caulimoviridae is entirely episomal. However, fragmented and rearranged endogenous caulimovirus sequences have been found in a wide variety of plant species (Teycheney and Geering 2011) . For the Hepadnaviridae, the viral genome can be integrated into the host genome, through a process that exploits ds breaks in the host genome. Although this is an infrequent event, the integrated viral DNA often contains deletion, inversions and duplications, often inactivating the virus. In the case of Hepatitis B virus (HBV), integration into the human genome can cause genetic damage and chromosomal instability leading to HBV-induced liver cancer (Shafritz et al.1981; Furuta et al. 2018 ).