Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
Pivot Concepts:   Target Concepts:
Query: EC:2.3.1.108 (TAT)
 2,389 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Studies of the genomic structure of human T-lymphotropic virus type III (HTLV-III) and related viruses, implicated as the causal agent of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), have identified a sixth open reading frame in addition to the five previously known within the genome (gag, pol, sor, env and 3'orf). This gene, called tat-III, lies between the sor and env genes and is able to mediate activation, in a trans configuration, of the genes linked to HTLV-III long terminal repeat (LTR) sequences. We now present evidence that the product of tat-III is an absolute requirement for virus expression. We show that derivatives of a biologically competent molecular clone of HTLV-III, in which the tat-III gene is deleted or the normal splicing abrogated, failed to produce or expressed unusually low levels of virus, respectively, when transfected into T-cell cultures. The capacity of these tat-III-defective genomes was transiently restored by co-transfection of a plasmid clone containing a functional tat-III gene or by introducing the TAT-III protein itself. As HTLV-III and related viruses are the presumed causal agents of AIDS and associated conditions, the observation that tat-III is critical for HTLV-III replication has important clinical implications, and suggests that specific inhibition of the activity of tat-III could be a novel and effective therapeutic approach to the treatment of AIDS.
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PMID:The trans-activator gene of HTLV-III is essential for virus replication. 300 95

For a few of retroviruses, the level of synthesis of viral proteins is greatly increased in the presence of a transactivator gene which is encoded by the virus. For instance, for HIV, TAT acts on target sequences present in the viral long terminal repeat (LTR). HIV-1 recombinant retrovirus (RRV), where the gag, pol and part of env genes have been exchanged for the reporter nlsLacZ gene, expresses the reporter gene only in presence of TAT. When the RRV is tat defective, this activity can be complemented by tat present on a second molecule. The expression of nlsLacZ can then be detected by a simple histochemical staining. If this complementation can also be provided by a wild type virus, then their detection and titration would be greatly simplified.
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PMID:[Toward an unpublished method of detecting human retroviruses: activation of HIV-1 LacZ recombinant provirus by the tat gene product]. 314 19