Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Endogenous retrovirus" in English language version.
It appears that the transition from nonviral retrotransposon to retrovirus has occurred independently at least eight times, and the source of the envelope gene responsible for infectious ability can now be traced to a virus in at least four of these instances. This suggests that potentially, any LTR retrotransposon can become a virus through the acquisition of existing viral genes.