Ionizing radiation activates nuclear factor kappa B but fails to produce an increase in human immunodeficiency virus gene expression in stably transfected human cells.

We have investigated the differential effects of ultraviolet light(UV) and ionizing radiation (IR) on human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV) and c-jun expression in HIVcat/HeLa cells. This cell line harbors integrated copies of the chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (cat) gene under control of the HIV promoter. Both UV and IR increased the binding of nuclear proteins to an oligonucleotide spanning the HIV enhancer region nuclear factor kappa B sites, but only UV increased HIVcat steady-state mRNA and CAT activity. By comparison, transcription of the cellular c-jun gene increased after both types of radiation, but UV was at least 5-fold more effective than IR despite the fact that protein binding to an activator protein 1 oligonucleotide increased similarly after both UV and IR. The lack of HIVcat transcriptional response after IR does not appear to be the result of the repressor binding to upstream promoter elements since cells stably transfected with different HIV promoter deletions showed a lack of response to IR distinguishable from that of the intact promoter. While our findings indicate no correlation between increased binding of transcription factors to upstream promoter elements and increased expression of these genes after radiation, we did observe major differences in how UV and IR affected chromatin structure. UV produced extensive global chromatin decondensation, whereas IR did not, as seen in the microscope and determined by the increased susceptibility of chromatin to micrococcal nuclease digestion.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)