title: Enzymatic amplification of exogenous and endogenous retroviral sequences from DNA of patients with tropical spastic paraparesis.
abstract: Using oligonucleotide primers that hybridize to conserved sequences in the reverse transcriptase (RT) gene, we have amplified by the polymerase chain reaction three sequence variants of HTLV-I from the genomic DNA of five patients with tropical spastic paraparesis (TSP), and a fourth sequence variant from a healthy carrier of HTLV-I. These results unequivocally identify the retrovirus associated with TSP as HTLV-I and suggest that no sequence variant is uniquely responsible for the condition. The same primers served to amplify two novel single-copy endogenous retroviral RT sequences related to the exogenous mammalian leukaemia viruses: and three KpnI (LINE1) family DNA repeats. This strategy, combining the sensitivity of PCR with cross-reactive primers, may be useful in the search for known or novel retroviruses in other diseases of possible retroviral aetiology.
authors: Institute for Molecular Medicine, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, UK.
authors: C R
authors: CR
authors: Bangham
authors: S
authors: S
authors: Daenke
authors: R E
authors: RE
authors: Phillips
authors: J K
authors: JK
authors: Cruickshank
authors: J I
authors: JI
authors: Bell
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D001483:Base Sequence; D004279:DNA, Viral / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D004259:DNA-Directed DNA Polymerase; D005784:Gene Amplification; D005814:Genes, Viral; D015368:Human T-lymphotropic virus 1 / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D006801:Humans; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D015493:Paraparesis, Tropical Spastic / Q000235:genetics / Q000382:microbiology*; D012194:RNA-Directed DNA Polymerase / Q000235:genetics; D012091:Repetitive Sequences, Nucleic Acid; D019914:Taq Polymerase
chemical_list: D004279:DNA, Viral; D019914:Taq Polymerase; D012194:RNA-Directed DNA Polymerase; D004259:DNA-Directed DNA Polymerase