Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus/human herpesvirus 8 RTA reactivates murine gammaherpesvirus 68 from latency |
| |
Authors: | Rickabaugh Tammy M Brown Helen J Wu Ting-Ting Song Moon Jung Hwang Seungmin Deng Hongyu Mitsouras Katherine Sun Ren |
| |
Institution: | Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1735, USA. |
| |
Abstract: | Murine gammaherpesvirus 68 (MHV-68), Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (HHV-8), and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) are all members of the gammaherpesvirus family, characterized by their ability to establish latency in lymphocytes. The RTA protein, conserved in all gammaherpesviruses, is known to play a critical role in reactivation from latency. Here we report that HHV-8 RTA, not EBV RTA, was able to induce MHV-68 lytic viral proteins and DNA replication and processing and produce viable MHV-68 virions from latently infected cells at levels similar to those for MHV-68 RTA. HHV-8 RTA was also able to activate two MHV-68 lytic promoters, whereas EBV RTA was not. In order to define the domains of RTA responsible for their functional differences in viral promoter activation and initiation of the MHV-68 lytic cycle, chimeric RTA proteins were constructed by exchanging the N-terminal and C-terminal domains of the RTA proteins. Our data suggest that the species specificity of MHV-68 RTA resides in the N-terminal DNA binding domain. |
| |
Keywords: | |
本文献已被 PubMed 等数据库收录! |
|