Progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) is a fatal demyelinating disorder of the CNS caused by infection of glial cells with the polyomavirus, JCV. Here we report that genomic stability and DNA repair are significantly dysregulated by JCV infection of human astrocytes. Metaphase spreads exhibited increased ploidy correlating with duration of infection. Increased micronuclei formation a...

Progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) remains an important complication of HIV-1/AIDS, despite widespread combined antiretroviral therapy (cART). As its name implies, it was long thought to be only a demyelinating disease restricted to brain white matter. However, JC virus (JCV), the causative agent of the classic PML form, infects glial cells and neurons, and is now known as the eti...

BACKGROUND The human neurotropic polyomavirus, JCV, contains an open reading frame within the late region of the viral genome that encodes a 71-amino-acid protein, agnoprotein. Because accumulating evidence supports an association between JCV infection and human brain tumors, including medulloblastomas, we assessed the presence of JCV Agno gene sequences and the expression of agnoprotein in a s...

John Cunningham virus (JCV) is a common polyomavirus classified as a possible carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. JCV may play a role in colorectal carcinogenesis, although we previously reported no association between JCV capsid antibodies and colorectal cancer. No studies have examined the role of seroreactivity to JCV T-antigen (T-Ag) oncoprotein in colorectal canc...

JC virus (JCV) is a human polyomavirus and the causative agent of the fatal demyelinating disease progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML). JCV infection of host cells is dependent on interactions with cell surface asparagine (N)-linked sialic acids and the serotonin 5-hydroxytryptamine(2A) receptor (5-HT(2A)R). The 5-HT(2A)R contains five potential N-linked glycosylation sites on the e...

Infection of the gastrointestinal tract by the human polyomavirus, JCV, which has been frequently detected in raw urban sewage, can occur via intake of contaminated water and food. In light of earlier reports on the tumorigenecity of JCV, we investigated the presence of the JCV genome and the expression of viral proteins in a collection of 27 well-characterized epithelial malignant tumors of th...

Genomic sequences of the human polyomaviruses, JC virus (JCV) and BK virus (BKV), and simian virus 40 (SV40) have been reported from several types of human brain tumors, but there have been no population-based seroepidemiologic studies to evaluate the association between polyomavirus infection and brain tumors. We conducted a case-control study, nested within a prospective cohort, to investigat...

JC virus (JCV), a human polyomavirus, exhibits oncogenic activity in rodents and primates. The large tumor antigens (TAgs) of the polyomaviruses play key roles in viral replication and oncogenic transformation. Analyses of JCV TAg phosphorylation mutants indicated that the amino-terminal phosphorylation site at threonine 125 (T125) is critical to TAg replication function. This site is also cons...

Polyomavirus JC (JCV) is the etiological agent of progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML), a demyelinating infection of oligodendrocytes in the brain. PML, a frequently fatal opportunistic infection in AIDS, has also emerged as a consequence of treatment with several new immunosuppressive therapeutic agents. Although nearly 80% of adults are seropositive, JCV attains an ability to infe...

The activating transcription factor 1 (AP-1) family of proteins consists of a large number of inducible factors that are implicated in many biological processes, including cellular and viral gene expression, cell proliferation, differentiation, and tumorigenesis. Here, we investigated the role of the AP-1 family members c-Jun and c-Fos in transcriptional regulation of the JC virus (JCV) promote...