Retrovirus-induced murine motor neuron disease: mapping the determinant of spongiform degeneration within the envelope gene.

The Cas-Br-E murine leukemia virus (MuLV) induces a degenerative myeloencephalopathy leading to hind-limb paralysis when inoculated into newborn mice. To map the viral DNA sequences encoding the determinant of neurological degeneration, we constructed chimeric viruses in vitro with parental genomes from Cas-Br-E MuLV and from nonparalytogenic MuLVs. We found that a 1.5-kilobase-pair env Cas-Br-E fragment was sufficient to confer the full paralysis-inducing potential to chimeric viruses. This region encodes the 19 carboxyl-terminal residues of the leader sequence, all of gp70, and the 45 amino-terminal residues of the transmembrane protein (p15E). Within this env region, we identified a 372-base-pair fragment which was necessary for the full paralysis-inducing potential of the virus and which influenced the development of the disease in a strain-dependent manner. This domain encodes the 19 carboxyl-terminal residues of the leader peptide and the first 67 amino-terminal residues of gp70. We propose that Cas-Br-E MuLV induces spongiform degeneration through binding of its gp70 to a specific cellular receptor.