Transforming activity and the level of Tax protein: effect of one point mutation in HTLV-I tax gene.
The transcriptional trans-activator molecule of HTLV-I, Tax, is known to transform rodent fibroblasts. A revertant clone expressing Tax was obtained by treating transformed Rat-I cells harboring a single copy of the tax gene with a mutagen. Sequence analysis of the tax gene of the revertant clone revealed that it had one point mutation at codon 12(CTT----TTT), resulting in a change from Leu to Phe. The colony-forming efficiencies of the cells transfected with the mutant tax gene (mu71 tax) were significantly lower than those transfected with the wild-type by the soft-agar method. This difference was shown to be due to the instability of mu71 Tax.
Sakurai
M
M
Institute for Virus Research, Kyoto University, Japan.
Yamaoka
S
S
Nosaka
T
T
Akayama
M
M
Tanaka
A
A
Maki
M
M
Hatanaka
M
M
D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D002472:Cell Transformation, Viral / Q000235:genetics*; D003114:Colony-Forming Units Assay; D016356:Gene Products, tax / Q000032:analysis*; D016355:Genes, pX / Q000235:genetics*; D015368:Human T-lymphotropic virus 1 / Q000235:genetics*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009154:Mutation / Q000235:genetics*; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D051381:Rats; D014162:Transfection
D016356:Gene Products, tax