Masking of Retroviral Envelope Functions by Oligomerizing Polypeptide Adaptors

Identification of oligomerizing peptides.

The AraC DNA binding domain is inactive in a monomeric form but can activate transcription from the arabinose operon promoters upon its dimerization. We used this property to identify plasmids encoding peptide additions to the AraC DNA binding domain that could dimerize the domain. We generated a high diversity library of plasmids by inserting 90-base oligonucleotides of random sequence ahead o...

Induction of intracellular cAMP by a synthetic retroviral envelope peptide: a possible mechanism of immunopathogenesis in retroviral infections.

A synthetic heptadecapeptide, CKS-17, represents the highly conserved amino acid sequences occurring within the transmembrane envelope protein of many animal and human retroviruses. CKS-17 has been demonstrated to exhibit suppressive properties for numerous immune functions. We have recently shown that CKS-17 acts as an immunomodulatory epitope causing an imbalance of human type 1 and type 2 cy...

Cell Envelope Structure and Functions in Gram-negative Bacteria

Identification of a retroviral receptor used by an envelope protein derived by peptide library screening.

This study demonstrates the power of a genetic selection to identify a variant virus that uses a new retroviral receptor protein. We screened a random peptide library within the receptor-binding domain of a feline leukemia virus retroviral Envelope (FeLV Env) protein for productive infection of feline AH927 cells. One variant, A5, obtained with altered tropic properties acquired the ability to ...

Multitasking: Making the Most out of the Retroviral Envelope

Evasion of the host's immune system is a required step for the establishment of viral infection. In this article, we discuss the recent findings of Heidmann and colleagues demonstrating that some retroviruses possess an immune suppressive (IS) domain "encrypted" within their envelope glycoprotein that is required to establish a successful infection in immunocompetent hosts [1].