Human herpesvirus 6A ts suppresses both transformation by H-ras and transcription by the H-ras and human immunodeficiency virus type 1 promoters.

Human herpesvirus 6 strain U1102 (HHV-6A) was shown to contain a 1,473-bp functional transformation suppressor gene (ts). ts exhibited 24% identity and 51% similarity to adeno-associated virus type 2 Rep68/78. Like adeno-associated virus type 2 Rep68/78, HHV-6A ts suppressed H-ras transformation of NIH 3T3 cells. Suppression of H-ras transformation was eliminated by translation termination linker mutation at amino acid 25, 125, or 245. These data indicated the importance of the C-terminal portion of the ts protein. H-ras transformation was suppressed by ts only when H-ras was expressed by its endogenous H-ras promoter and not when it was expressed by the heterologous murine osteosarcoma virus long terminal repeat (LTR). Furthermore, ts suppressed chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT) activity when the CAT gene was expressed from the H-ras promoter but not the murine osteosarcoma virus LTR promoter. Taken together, the data showed that ts suppressed H-ras transformation at the level of the H-ras promoter. To further identify the interaction of ts with transcriptional regulatory elements, the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) LTR was used. This promoter was selected because it has well-defined transcriptional regulatory elements for both basal and activated transcription, because its activity is inhibited by the Rep68/78 gene, and because both HHV-6 and HIV-1 naturally infect CD4+ T cells in vivo and have been shown to infect the same cell in vitro. ts suppressed expression from both wild-type and upstream mutant HIV-1 LTR-CAT constructs. However, downstream HIV-1 TAR mutations reversed ts suppression, indicating that TAR is one of the critical elements involved. The data presented demonstrated that HHV-6A ts functionally suppressed H-ras transformation and HIV-1 LTR expression and thus that it may be useful in future gene therapy.