title: Cloning of HTLV-4 and its relation to simian and human immunodeficiency viruses.
abstract: Although much is now known of the strain variation among the type-1 human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1), which is the cause of AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) in the United States, Europe, and Central Africa, much less is yet known about a second group of viruses that have been found in West Africans. One member of this group, named human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 4 (HTLV-4), has been isolated from healthy Senegalese. Another is the virus isolated from West Africans with AIDS-like illness and originally called LAV-2 but now renamed HIV-2. Both these viruses seem to be less closely related to HIV-1 than they are to a virus of healthy African green monkeys, known variously as simian T-cell lymphotropic virus type 3 (STLV-3) or simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), which in turn is related to viruses isolated from healthy sooty mangabeys and captive macaques with a form of immunodeficiency (to distinguish these viruses they are referred to as STLV-3 (or SIV)agm, STLV-3mac, or STLV-3smm). To clarify the relationship between the various HIVs, STLV-3s and HTLV-4 we are determining and comparing the molecular and biological characteristics of several of them. Following our recent publication of a restriction-site map of STLV-3agm, we now report that the equivalent map of three isolates of HTLV-4 is remarkably similar to it. In addition we present comparative sequence data on the long terminal repeats (LTR) of HTLV-4, STLV-3agm, HIV-1 and HIV-2, together with evidence that cloned HTLV-4 uses the same receptor as HIV-1 and induces some, but not all, of the cytopathic effects attributed to most isolates of HIV-1 and HIV-2.
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D003001:Cloning, Molecular; D004279:DNA, Viral / Q000032:analysis; D006678:HIV / Q000235:genetics* / Q000472:pathogenicity; D000882:Haplorhini / Q000382:microbiology*; D006801:Humans; D011991:Receptors, Virus / Q000032:analysis; D012091:Repetitive Sequences, Nucleic Acid; D012689:Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid; D014162:Transfection
chemical_list: D004279:DNA, Viral; D011991:Receptors, Virus