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Kinetics and intracellular compartmentalization of HTLV-1 gene expression
Retrovirology volume 8, Article number: A204 (2011)
Human T cell leukemia virus Type 1 (HTLV-1) codes for at least 9 alternatively-spliced transcripts and two major regulatory proteins named Tax and Rex that function at the transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels, respectively. We investigated the temporal sequence of HTLV-1 gene expression in primary cells from infected patients using splice site-specific quantitative RT-PCR. The results indicated a two-phase kinetics with the Tax/Rex mRNA preceding expression of other viral transcripts. Using transfection of HTLV-1 molecular clones and subcellular RNA fractionation we demonstrated the Rex-dependency of the two-phase kinetics and determined the compartmentalization of the individual mRNAs, showing that over 90% of the HBZ mRNAs were retained in the nucleus. Mathematical modelling revealed the importance of a functional delay of Rex function compared to Tax, which was supported by experimental evidence of delayed accumulation and longer half-life of Rex. These data provided the first evidence for a temporal pattern of HTLV-1 expression and revealed major differences in the intracellular compartmentalization of HTLV-1 transcripts.
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Open Access This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Rende, F., Cavallari, I., Corradin, A. et al. Kinetics and intracellular compartmentalization of HTLV-1 gene expression. Retrovirology 8 (Suppl 1), A204 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1186/1742-4690-8-S1-A204
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1742-4690-8-S1-A204
Keywords
- Leukemia Virus
- Temporal Sequence
- Intracellular Compartmentalization
- Viral Transcript
- Individual mRNAs