Human endogenous retroviruses (HERV), which occupy 8% of the human genome, retain scarce coding capacities but a hundred thousand long terminal repeats (LTRs). A custom Affymetrix microarray was designed to identify individual HERV locus expression and was used on prostate cancer tissues as a proof of concept for future clinical studies.
Pérot, P., Cheynet, V., Decaussin-Petrucci, M., Oriol, G., Mugnier, N., Rodriguez-Lafrasse, C., Ruffion, A., Mallet, F. Microarray-based Identification of Individual HERV Loci Expression: Application to Biomarker Discovery in Prostate Cancer. J. Vis. Exp. (81), e50713, doi:10.3791/50713 (2013).