Molecular Virology Section, Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology, National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892-0460, USA.
Retrovirology. 2012 Dec 7;9:103. doi: 10.1186/1742-4690-9-103.
Human T-cell Leukemia Virus type 1 (HTLV-1) and 2 (HTLV-2) are two closely related human retroviruses. HTLV-1 is associated with an aggressive Adult T-cell Leukemia (ATL) while there is no evidence for an association of HTLV-2 with any human malignancies. The two viruses encode transactivator proteins, Tax-1 and Tax-2 respectively. In ATL, Tax-1 is thought to play a central role in the transformation of a normal T-cell into a leukemic cell; however, it has not been entirely clear how post-translational modifications of Tax-1 influence its transforming activity. Here, we discuss three recent papers that report on the ubiquitination and sumoylation of Tax-1 and Tax-2. We comment on their divergent findings implicating the importance (or lack of importance) of these modifications and other events on Tax activation of NF-κB as related to cellular transformation.
人类 T 细胞白血病病毒 1 型（HTLV-1）和 2 型（HTLV-2）是两种密切相关的人类逆转录病毒。HTLV-1 与侵袭性成人 T 细胞白血病（ATL）有关，而没有证据表明 HTLV-2 与任何人类恶性肿瘤有关。这两种病毒分别编码反式激活蛋白 Tax-1 和 Tax-2。在 ATL 中，Tax-1 被认为在将正常 T 细胞转化为白血病细胞中发挥核心作用；然而，其翻译后修饰如何影响其转化活性尚不完全清楚。在这里，我们讨论了三篇最近的论文，这些论文报告了 Tax-1 和 Tax-2 的泛素化和 sumoylation。我们评论了它们不同的发现，这些发现暗示了这些修饰以及 Tax 对 NF-κB 的激活与细胞转化相关的其他事件的重要性（或不重要性）。
