An excisable retroviral vector, TSN-Iox, was developed by exploiting Cre-IoxP homologous recombination. An integrated TSN-lox provirus could be excised, leaving a solo long terminal repeat at the integration site; inverse PCR, taking advantage of the solo long terminal repeat, was used to characterize cellular flanking sequences. A TSN-lox-transduced Rat2 cell clone, lox-7, was found to harbor ...

Slow transforming retroviruses, such as the Moloney murine leukemia virus (M-MuLV), induce tumors upon infection of a host after a relatively long latency period. The underlying mechanism leading to cell transformation is the activation of proto-oncogenes or inactivation of tumor suppressor genes as a consequence of proviral insertions into the host genome. Cells carrying proviral insertions th...

Human T-lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I), a causative agent of adult T-cell leukemia, (ATL) is transmitted from mother to child. ATL cells originate from the CD4 subset of peripheral T cells. The main route of mother-to-child transmission is postnatal breast-feeding. Refraining from breast-feeding or limiting the duration of breast-feeding can reduce the risk of mother-to-child transmission. ...

OBJECTIVE To investigate distinctive features in drug-resistant mutations (DRMs) and interpretations for reverse transcriptase inhibitors (RTIs) between proviral DNA and paired viral RNA in HIV-1-infected patients. METHODS Forty-three HIV-1-infected individuals receiving first-line antiretroviral therapy were recruited to participate in a multicenter AIDS Cohort Study in Anhui and Henan Provi...

The expression of the v-rel oncogene of avian reticuloendotheliosis virus (REV-T) transforms and immortalizes very immature avian lymphoid cells. In REV-T-transformed lymphoid cells which were persistently infected with reticuloendotheliosis-associated virus (REV-A), the REV-T proviral copy number increases after the initial integration event. In 23 independently derived REV-T-transformed cell ...

Sir, Adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATL) is a peripheral T-cell malignancy caused by human T-cell lymphotrophic virus type I (HTLV-I). The characteristic clinical features of ATL include generalized lymphadenopathy, leukemic cells of T-cell origin with highly convoluted nuclei, skin involvement, hypercalcemia and rapid progress of the clinical course. Relatively high rates of HTLV-I infection ...

Intravenous administration of a novel recombinant rhesus mAb against the α4β7 gut-homing integrin (mAb) into rhesus macaques just prior to and during acute SIV infection resulted in significant decrease in plasma and gastrointestinal (GI) tissue viral load and a marked reduction in GI tissue proviral DNA load as compared with control SIV-infected rhesus macaques. This mAb administration was ass...

CD8(+) T cells can exert both protective and harmful effects on the virus-infected host. However, there is no systematic method to identify the attributes of a protective CD8(+) T cell response. Here, we combine theory and experiment to identify and quantify the contribution of all HLA class I alleles to host protection against infection with a given pathogen. In 432 HTLV-1-infected individuals...

While human T-lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I) proviral genome is readily detected in leukemic lymphocytes from adult T-cell leukemia patients, viral antigens or viral RNA are not expressed unless these cells are cultured. To address the problem of possible restriction mechanism of HTLV-I replication, we studied the methylation state of provirus in four HTLV-I transformed cell lines. These ce...