High-Risk Alphapapillomavirus Oncogenes Impair the Homologous Recombination Pathway.

Persistent high-risk genus human (HPV) infections cause nearly every cervical carcinoma and a subset of tumors in the oropharyngeal tract. During the decades required for HPV-associated tumorigenesis, the cellular genome becomes significantly destabilized. Our analysis of cervical tumors from four separate data sets found a significant upregulation of the homologous-recombination (HR) pathway genes.