2024 — HERV ribosome profiling across healthy human tissues

One-paragraph summary

Ribo-seq quantification of HERV translation across multiple healthy human tissues. HERVs account for 0.1-0.4% of all translation, with distinct tissue-specific profiles. Establishes that HERVs are actively translated outside disease contexts — they contribute viral-origin protein sequences to the human proteome at baseline. Filters the Q40 pipeline candidate set from all annotated HERV ORFs (~thousands) to actually-translated ones (~hundreds), with tissue-specific expression patterns informing FM-relevant filtering (immune cells, muscle, neurons).

Claims as triples

• HERV_reactivation — present_in → fm_central_only [contextual; confidence: emerging]

Methods note

Ribo-seq across primary human tissues and cell types. Proteomic validation by mass spectrometry where available. Tissue-specific translation profile generation.

Limitations

• Healthy-tissue baseline; doesn't directly inform disease-state HERV translation (which Oltra 2023 addresses).
• Ribo-seq detects ribosome occupancy; protein abundance/stability are downstream variables.

Triangulation notes

• Q40 pipeline Step 1 filtering input: focus the protein universe on actually-translated HERV ORFs in FM-relevant tissues. Likely 5-10× reduction in candidate set.
• Pairs with the bioRxiv 2025 comprehensive HERV domain annotation for Step 1.