Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 1988 Oct;85(20):7632-6.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.85.20.7632.

Extinction of JC virus tumor-antigen expression in glial cell--fibroblast hybrids

A H Beggs  1 , R J Frisque, G A Scangos
Affiliations

Extinction of JC virus tumor-antigen expression in glial cell--fibroblast hybrids

A H Beggs et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1988 Oct.

Abstract

JC virus (JCV) is a ubiquitous human papovavirus that shares sequence and structural homology with simian virus 40 (SV40). In contrast to SV40, expression of JCV is restricted to a small number of cell types, including human fetal glial cells, uroepithelial cells, amnion cells, and some endothelial cells. To study the control of JCV early region expression, we made heterokaryons and stable hybrids between JCV-transformed hamster glial cells and mouse fibroblasts. Binucleate heterokaryons exhibited extinction of large tumor antigen expression in the hamster nuclei as assayed by indirect immunofluorescence. This extinction was both time and dose dependent: extinction reached maximal levels at 24-36 hr after fusion and was dependent on the ratio of glial cell to fibroblast nuclei in multinucleated heterokaryons. Extinction also was observed in stable hybrids between the glial cells and mouse Ltk- cells. Southern blot analysis showed that the extinguished hybrids contained viral sequences. Reexpression of large tumor antigen was observed in several subclones, suggesting that extinction was correlated with the loss of murine fibroblast chromosomes from these hybrids. The cis-acting region that mediates extinction resides within the viral regulatory region, which contains two 98-base-pair repeats that have enhancer activity. These data demonstrate that cellular factors that negatively regulate viral gene expression contribute to the restricted cell-type specificity of this virus.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Cell. 1986 Aug 15;46(4):591-602 - PubMed
    1. Cell. 1986 Jul 4;46(1):13-8 - PubMed
    1. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1987 Mar;84(6):1614-8 - PubMed
    1. Mol Cell Biol. 1987 Nov;7(11):4003-9 - PubMed
    1. Mol Cell Biol. 1988 Aug;8(8):3448-57 - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources