Karlık, ElifGürbüz, OrkunYıldız, YemlihaGözükırmızı, Nermin2021-03-152021-03-152021Karlik, E., Gurbuz, O., Yildiz, Y., & Gozukirmizi, N. (2021). Endogenous retrovirus HERV-K6 and HERV-K11 polymorphisms’ analyses in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma patients. Meta Gene, 100876.2214-5400https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mgene.2021.100876https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12713/1582Many tumors, such as melanoma, breast cancer, germ cell tumors, renal cancer or ovarian cancer, express HERV proteins, mainly HERV-K (HML6) and HERV-K (HML2). However, there is no report showing any relation between squamous cell carcinoma of head and neck (HNSCC) and HERVs in literature. Here we report the polymorphic changes of HERV-K6 and HERV-K11 in tumor tissue samples of HNSCC patients comparing with healthy individuals. For this purpose, genomic DNAs from tumor tissue samples of 2 healthy individuals and of 8 HNSCC patients were isolated and IRAP-PCR was performed. IRAP-PCR analyses demonstrated that there were 18–73% polymorphism rates for HERV-K6 and 38–100% polymorphism rates for HERV-K11 among all the samples. There were also polymorphic changes between two control materials. Therefore, HERV-K6 polymorphisms may arise on an individual-specific basis. In the previous studies, some associations have been reported between the expression of HERVs and some cancer types or other major diseases. However, few reports have analyzed HERV-K movements among HNSCC patients. This report is the first study investigating HERV-K6 and HERV-K11 retrotransposon polymorphic changes in HNSCC patients.eninfo:eu-repo/semantics/closedAccessEndogenous RetrovirusesHERVHNSCCIRAPPolymorphismArticle28WOS:0006415843000072-s2.0-85101550114N/A10.1016/j.mgene.2021.100876Q4