TRIM5-cyclophilin A (
TRIMCyp) fusion gene is an unusual
TRIM5 locus. At present, this fusion
phenomenon has been found in the representative species which contain owl monkey (
Aotus trivirgatus
) of
Aotus genus
that belongs to New World monkeys and Old World monkeys such as Northern pig-tailed macaque (
M. leonina
), Sunda
pig-tailed macaque(
M. nemestrina
), Crab-eating macaque (
M. fascicularis
), Indian rhesus macaque (
M. mulatta
) and
Assam macaque (
M. assamensis
), etc. But the fusion mode and transcription splicing pattern of
TRIMCyp fusion gene are
different between New World and Old World monkeys. The
TRIMCyp fusion gene of New World monkeys is formed by
inserting a CypA pseudogene cDNA sequence into the region between exon 7 and exon 8 of the
TRIM5 locus through
retrotransposition. However the
TRIMCyp fusion gene of Old World monkeys results from the retrotransposition of a
CypA pseudogene cDNA into 3' terminal or 3'-UTR of
TRIM5 gene. The distributions, genotypes, expression and
restricting activities against different retroviruses of TRIMCyp were different across species of primates. Moreover, most
of the researches focused on the
TRIMCyp fusion gene of owl monkey and pig-tailed macaque and found that they may
play very important roles in restricting HIV-1 replication and determine the susceptibility to HIV-1 infection. It was
reported that the TRIMCyp protein of owl monkey could inhibit HIV-1 infection in a similar way as TRIM5α, but TRIMCyp protein of pig-tailed monkey loss the restricting activity to HIV-1 infection. Here we reviewed the distributions,
genotypes and restriction mechanism for inhibiting retroviruses replication of
TRIMCyp fusion gene in primates.