Family With Sequence Similarity 8, Member A1 (FAM8A1)

FAM8A1 was captured by a retrovirus, followed by multiple retrotransposition events, during primate evolution between 45 and 58 million years ago. Only the functional FAM8A1 gene is expressed and displays a ubiquitous mRNA and a testis-specific transcript present in the haploid phase of spermatogenesis.

The structural features of the FAM8A1 pseudogenes include two short sequences of similarity between the FAM8A1 mRNA and the HERV sequences at both the 5' and 3' integration sites. These hallmarks suggest an alternative model to account for the capture of FAM8A1 cellular mRNA by HERV-K, involving illegitimate recombination events at the two sites of sequence similarity during reverse transcription.