Tissue tropism and promoter sequence variation in caprine arthritis encephalitis virus infected goats.
Caprine arthritis encephalitis virus is a lentivirus that infects goats and is closely related to maedi-visna virus of sheep. Infection with CAEV results in multiple discrete disease manifestations in goats which can include chronic arthritis, mastitis, pneumonia or encephalomyelitis. Presently, no satisfactory mechanistic rationale for viral tropism has been put forward. We propose that specific sequences in the lentiviral promoter (U3 region of the viral long terminal repeat) are associated with viral tissue tropism and subsequent disease expression. A total of 41 distinct CAE viral promoter regions were amplified, sequenced and phylogenetically compared from the tissues of 24 CAEV-infected goats demonstrating a variety of disease manifestations. Phylogenetically, we identified no tendency for clustering of these promoter sequences into tissue-specific groups. These results therefore do not provide evidence for the study hypothesis. However, multiple motifs within the U3 promoter region were highly conserved both within the entire collection of sequences and within tissue-specific groups.
Murphy
B
B
Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California, Davis, CA 95616 USA. bmurphy@ucdavis.edu
McElliott
V
V
Vapniarsky
N
N
Oliver
A
A
Rowe
J
J
D000818:Animals; D016088:Arthritis-Encephalitis Virus, Caprine / Q000235:genetics / Q000472:pathogenicity*; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D005260:Female; D005838:Genotype; D015511:Goat Diseases / Q000821:virology*; D006041:Goats; D016180:Lentivirus Infections / Q000662:veterinary* / Q000821:virology; D008297:Male; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D011110:Polymorphism, Genetic; D011401:Promoter Regions, Genetic; D012367:RNA, Viral / Q000235:genetics; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D017385:Sequence Homology; D056189:Viral Tropism
D012367:RNA, Viral