Mergia A, Wu M
Department of Pathobiology, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Florida, Gainesville 32610, USA.
J Virol. 1998 Jan;72(1):817-22. doi: 10.1128/JVI.72.1.817-822.1998.
We have cloned proviral DNA of simian foamy virus type 1 (SFV-1) from linear unintegrated DNA (pSFV-1). Transfection of pSFV-1 induces cytopathology in several cell lines with supernatants from the transfected cell culture containing infectious viral particles. Electron microscopy of the transfected cells revealed foamy virus particles. Deletion analysis of pSFV-1 indicated that the transcriptional transactivator (tas) gene located between env and the long terminal repeat is critical for virus replication, whereas the second open reading frame (ORF-2) in this region is dispensable. Although the tas and ORF-2 regions of foamy viruses have significantly diverged, the results presented here suggested that the gene products have similar functions. Recombinant pSFV-1 containing the cat gene was able to transduce the heterologous gene, indicating the utility of SFV-1 as a vector. An infectious clone of SFV-1 which is distantly related to the human foamy virus will provide a means to understand the biology of this unique group of viruses.
我们从线性未整合DNA（pSFV-1）中克隆了1型猿猴泡沫病毒（SFV-1）的前病毒DNA。pSFV-1的转染在几种细胞系中诱导细胞病变，转染细胞培养物的上清液中含有传染性病毒颗粒。对转染细胞进行电子显微镜检查发现了泡沫病毒颗粒。pSFV-1的缺失分析表明，位于env和长末端重复序列之间的转录反式激活因子（tas）基因对病毒复制至关重要，而该区域的第二个开放阅读框（ORF-2）则是可有可无的。尽管泡沫病毒的tas和ORF-2区域有显著差异，但此处给出的结果表明基因产物具有相似的功能。含有cat基因的重组pSFV-1能够转导异源基因，这表明SFV-1作为载体具有实用性。与人类泡沫病毒关系较远的SFV-1的感染性克隆将为了解这一独特病毒群体的生物学特性提供一种手段。
