Katamine S, Otsu M, Tada K, Tsuchiya S, Sato T, Ishida N, Honjo T, Ono Y
Nature. 1984;309(5966):369-72. doi: 10.1038/309369a0.
The very early stages of the human B-cell differentiation pathway are poorly understood, primarily because of the lack of appropriate permanent cell lines. Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is a putative human oncogenic virus which transforms human B cells in vitro into continuously proliferating cells. It has been believed that EBV transforms mature B cells, but recently, transformation of immature pre-B-cell lines has been reported, suggesting that EBV might also transform cells much earlier in the B-cell lineage. We report here the establishment of cell lines transformed by EBV at various stages of the B-cell differentiation pathway. Interestingly, two lines showed the complete absence of immunoglobulin synthesis and the lack of immunoglobulin gene rearrangement despite containing EBV genome and surface markers of B cells. Our results indicate that EBV can infect and transform cells of the B lymphocyte lineage even before immunoglobulin gene rearrangement.
人类B细胞分化途径的早期阶段目前了解甚少，主要原因是缺乏合适的永久性细胞系。爱泼斯坦-巴尔病毒（EBV）是一种假定的人类致癌病毒，它可在体外将人类B细胞转化为持续增殖的细胞。一直以来人们认为EBV转化成熟B细胞，但最近有报道称其可转化未成熟的前B细胞系，这表明EBV可能也会在B细胞谱系中更早阶段转化细胞。我们在此报告了在B细胞分化途径不同阶段由EBV转化的细胞系的建立。有趣的是，尽管两个细胞系含有EBV基因组和B细胞表面标志物，但它们完全不合成免疫球蛋白且缺乏免疫球蛋白基因重排。我们的结果表明，EBV甚至可在免疫球蛋白基因重排之前感染并转化B淋巴细胞谱系的细胞。
