Fig. 3

PCR detection of HTLV-1 in a patient with HAM/TSP (NIH00261). a Representative two-dimensional ddPCR profiles of the detection of HTLV-1 tax sequences in HAM/TSP patients; PBMCs and CSF DNA of patient NIH00261 with divergent HTLV-1 and PBMCs DNA of patient NIH00565 with prototype HTLV-1. HAM/TSP (NIH00565) is a typical HAM/TSP patient evaluated at the NIH. Y-axis shows detection of tax sequences normalized by detection of human ribonuclease P protein subunit 30 (RPP30) on the x-axis. b Alignment of HTLV-1 tax sequences generated by ddPCR in case (NIH00261) and reference HAM/TSP patients (NIH00565) along with a prototypic HTLV-1 subtype a (ATK). The other prototypic HTLV-1 subtype a variants (boi and TSP-1), subtype b (EL), subtype c (mel5) and African STLV-1 strains (Mnd17J, wrc, Tan90, F88395, Ptr-Loukoum and Ptr-Leo) are also used for comparison. The tax region amplified by ddPCR (nt 736-889) is highlighted on the schematic representation of an HTLV-1 tax gene (1062 bp; NCBI Gene ID 14191938). Location of primers and probe are underlined and boxed, respectively