A newly identified protein from HTLV-III/LAV, the virus implicated as the etiologic agent of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome, was studied. This protein, which has a molecular weight of 27,000 (p27), was shown by amino acid sequencing to have a coding origin 3' to the env gene on the HTLV-III genome. The presence of antibodies to p27 in virus-exposed individuals indicated that this gene is functional in the natural host.
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| http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.2997921 | DOI Listing |
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The genome of the HTLV-III/LAV retrovirus, the etiologic agent of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), encodes the viral structural proteins (envelope and core proteins), the reverse transcriptase, a transactivation protein (tat-III), as well as two other proteins (3'orf, sor) of unknown function. We studied the prevalence of natural antibodies against envelope, gag, 3'orf, sor, and tat-III in the sera of HTLV-III infected individuals in an attempt to correlate clinical status with seropositivity to specific HTLV-III antigens. We selected 101 sera; 16 were obtained from normal donors with no known risk factors, and 85 were from patients with full-fledged AIDS (28 cases), AIDS-related complex (ARC, 22 cases), and healthy people at risk (homosexuals, intravenous [IV] drug users, relatives of AIDS patients; 35 cases).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHuman T-lymphotropic virus type III (HTLV-III/LAV) has been shown to contain at least four extra genes in addition to the three essential genes (gag, pol, env) for replication of most retroviruses. These genes are expressed by complex splicing mechanisms and utilization of overlapping reading frames. We now demonstrate that there is an eighth gene which encodes a protein which is immunogenic and recognized by sera of some HTLV-III seropositive people.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe present studies were initiated to define the coding region of a 34 kilodalton (kd) protein (p34) frequently observed with antibodies from HTLV-III/LAV-infected people by immunoblotting and radioimmunoprecipitation (RIP) techniques. We have directly mapped this viral protein to the pol gene of HTLV-III/LAV by radiolabeled amino acid sequence analysis. This region at the 3' end of the pol gene is predicted to encode the endonuclease/integrase of the virus.
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View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe genome of human T-cell lymphotropic virus type III/lymphadenopathy-associated virus (HTLV-III/LAV), the infectious agent etiologically associated with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, contains, in addition to the genes for the polymerase, core, and envelope proteins, several open reading frames. To investigate whether the 3' open reading frame (3' orf) located between the envelope gene and the 3' long terminal repeat is a gene expressed in vivo in infected individuals, we inserted a fragment of 3' orf in a prokaryotic expression vector. The protein product synthesized in bacteria was purified and allowed to react with sera from individuals infected with human T-cell lymphotropic virus type III as indicated by seropositivity for other viral proteins.
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