New Insights into Retrovirus–Host Coevolution

ZAP is an antiviral protein that targets viral RNAs rich in CpG dinucleotides—a pattern rare in human transcripts. The study shows that low ZAP activity in mustached monkeys and lemurs is associated with higher CpG levels in their lentiviruses and even their own genomes. These findings support the idea that antiviral defenses such as ZAP leave long-term evolutionary imprints, influencing genome composition in both viruses and hosts. The results of the study can be found here.

Image: Mustached monkey (Cercopithecus cephus); source: Peggy Motsch; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cercopithecus_cephus.JPG; Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license