Construction and characterization of a human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 3 infectious molecular clone.

Sébastien Alain Chevalier (1, 2) , Nga Ling Ko (2) , Sara Calattini (2) , Adeline Mallet (3) , Marie-Christine Prévost (3) , Kylene Kehn (4) , John N. Brady (1) , Fatah Kashanchi (4) , Antoine Gessain (2) , Renaud Mahieux (2, 4)

1 NIH/NCI/LCO/VTB
2 Epidémiologie et Physiopathologie des Virus Oncogènes
3 Microscopie électronique (Plate-forme)
4 Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Tropical Medicine and Department of Biochemistry

We and others have uncovered the existence of human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 3 (HTLV-3). We have now generated an HTLV-3 proviral clone. We established that gag, env, pol, pro, and tax/rex as well as minus-strand mRNAs are present in cells transfected with the HTLV-3 clone. HTLV-3 p24(gag) protein is detected in the cell culture supernatant. Transfection of 293T-long terminal repeat (LTR)-green fluorescent protein (GFP) cells with the HTLV-3 clone promotes formation of syncytia, a hallmark of Env expression, together with the appearance of fluorescent cells, demonstrating that Tax is expressed. Viral particles are visible by electron microscopy. These particles are infectious, as demonstrated by infection experiments with purified virions.

Sébastien Alain Chevalier, Nga Ling Ko, Sara Calattini, Adeline Mallet, Marie-Christine Prévost, et al.. Construction and characterization of a human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 3 infectious molecular clone.. Journal of Virology, 2008, 82 (13), pp.6747-52. ⟨10.1128/JVI.00247-08⟩. ⟨pasteur-00363856⟩