Proviral activation of the c-myb proto-oncogene is detectable in preleukemic mice infected neonatally with Moloney murine leukemia virus but not in resulting end stage T lymphomas.
Moloney murine leukemia virus induces myeloid leukemia when inoculated intravenously into pristane-primed adult BALB/c mice. One hundred percent of these tumors show insertional activation of the c-myb proto-oncogene, and reverse transcriptase PCR assays have shown that the c-myb activation could be detected soon after infection. We tested BALB/c and NIH Swiss mice that had been inoculated as newborns with Moloney murine leukemia virus, under which conditions they develop T lymphomas exclusively. Reverse transcriptase-PCR assays indicated that c-myb activations were detectable soon after neonatal infection. However, none of the resulting T lymphomas contained c-myb activations. The implications of these results to the timing of proto-oncogene activations in leukemogenesis and the specificity of proto-oncogene activations for different diseases are discussed.
Belli
B
B
Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, University of California, Irvine 92717, USA.
Wolff
L
L
Nazarov
V
V
Fan
H
H
D000818:Animals; D000831:Animals, Newborn; D015967:Gene Expression Regulation, Viral; D016399:Lymphoma, T-Cell / Q000235:genetics / Q000821:virology*; D051379:Mice; D008807:Mice, Inbred BALB C; D008979:Moloney murine leukemia virus; D009857:Oncogenes; D011289:Preleukemia / Q000235:genetics* / Q000821:virology