Yedavalli V R, Chappey C, Ahmad N
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, College of Medicine, The University of Arizona Health Sciences Center, Tucson, Arizona 85724, USA.
J Virol. 1998 Aug;72(8):6937-43. doi: 10.1128/JVI.72.8.6937-6943.1998.
The vpr sequences from six human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1)-infected mother-infant pairs following perinatal transmission were analyzed. We found that 153 of the 166 clones analyzed from uncultured peripheral blood mononuclear cell DNA samples showed a 92.17% frequency of intact vpr open reading frames. There was a low degree of heterogeneity of vpr genes within mothers, within infants, and between epidemiologically linked mother-infant pairs. The distances between vpr sequences were greater in epidemiologically unlinked individuals than in epidemiologically linked mother-infant pairs. Moreover, the infants' sequences displayed patterns similar to those seen in their mothers. The functional domains essential for Vpr activity, including virion incorporation, nuclear import, and cell cycle arrest and differentiation were highly conserved in most of the sequences. Phylogenetic analyses of 166 mother-infant pairs and 195 other available vpr sequences from HIV databases formed distinct clusters for each mother-infant pair and for other vpr sequences and grouped the six mother-infant pairs' sequences with subtype B sequences. A high degree of conservation of intact and functional vpr supports the notion that vpr plays an important role in HIV-1 infection and replication in mother-infant isolates that are involved in perinatal transmission.
对六对母婴围产期传播后感染1型人类免疫缺陷病毒（HIV-1）的vpr序列进行了分析。我们发现，从未培养的外周血单个核细胞DNA样本中分析的166个克隆中，有153个显示完整vpr开放阅读框的频率为92.17%。母亲体内、婴儿体内以及流行病学相关的母婴对之间的vpr基因异质性程度较低。在流行病学上无关联的个体中，vpr序列之间的距离大于流行病学相关的母婴对。此外，婴儿的序列显示出与母亲相似的模式。Vpr活性所必需的功能域，包括病毒体整合、核输入以及细胞周期阻滞和分化，在大多数序列中高度保守。对166对母婴对以及来自HIV数据库的195个其他可用vpr序列进行系统发育分析，每个母婴对和其他vpr序列形成了不同的簇，并将六对母婴对的序列与B亚型序列归为一组。完整且功能性vpr的高度保守支持了这样一种观点，即vpr在参与围产期传播的母婴分离株中的HIV-1感染和复制中起重要作用。
