Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
Pivot Concepts:   Target Concepts:
Query: UNIPROT:P51532 (transcriptional activator)
 6,546 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Three human T-lymphotropic viruses have been isolated and characterized in the past 5 years. The ability to culture target cells with T-cell growth factor and sensitive detection systems for the virally encoded polymerase reverse transcriptase permitted isolation of HTLV-I, which is strongly linked to the cause of adult T-cell leukemia and associated with other lymphoid malignancies in endemic areas. The same techniques, using a permissive human tumor cell line, allowed the isolation and characterization of HTLV-III/lymphadenopathy-associated virus, which is implicated as the primary cause of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). This virus shares some features with HTLV-I and HTLV-II, such as additional genes not found in most retroviruses. One gene codes for a transcriptional activator protein and may be a feature of a larger group of related retroviruses. The clear identification of the primary cause of AIDS has resulted in the development of specific immunologic reagents, preventive and therapeutic proposals, and comprehensive identification of the clinical diseases associated with this virus.
 ...
PMID:A human T-lymphotropic retrovirus (HTLV-III) as the cause of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. 299 99

A T-lymphotropic retrovirus with cytopathic but not immortalizing activity has been isolated repeatedly from patients with acquired immune deficiency (AIDS) or lymphadenopathy syndrome (LAS) and successfully transmitted to a T-cell line (HT) for continuous production. Seroepidemiology data and the OKT4 tropism and cytopathogenicity of this virus indicate it is the etiological agent of AIDS. We have cloned HTLV-III genomes using three approaches: (1) cDNA clones were obtained from a cDNA plasmid library constructed from RNA of purified virions using oligo (dT) primers; (2) unintegrated provirus clones were obtained from Hirt supernatants of acutely infected H9 cells using virus from H9/HTLV-III; (3) clones of integrated provirus with flanking cellular sequences were obtained from a genomic DNA library of H9/HTLV-III. Analyses of these clones show that the HTLV-III genome is similar in size to those of HTLV-I and HTLV-II and contains a gene that functions as a transcriptional activator. Different isolates of HTLV-III display greater polymorphism than different isolates of HTLV-I among each other, possibly due to the highly replicative nature of HTLV-III. Viral sequences could be detected in fresh lymph node tissues of some AIDS patients, but even in the positive samples the number of infected cells is small (less than 1%). In both fresh tissues that are positive for viral sequences and HTLV-III infected cell lines, a substantial amount of unintegrated viral DNA is present in addition to integrated provirus. This is an unusual finding for retroviruses but may be significant in the cytopathicity of HTLV-III as has been proposed for some avain retroviruses.
 ...
PMID:Molecular characterization of human T-lymphotropic leukemia virus type III associated with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. 610 Jun 46