For millions of years, retroviral infections have challenged vertebrates, occasionally leading
to germline integration and inheritance as ERVs, genetic parasites whose remnants today
constitute some 7% to 8% of the human genome. Although they have had significant
evolutionary side effects, it is useful to view ERVs as fossil representatives of retroviruses
extant at the time of their insertion into the germline and not as direct players in the
evolutionary process itself. Expression of particular ERVs is associated with several positive�…