Phylogenetic and biological analysis of a laboratory-generated gammaretrovirus xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV).
A xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) has been reported to be an emerging pathogen associated with prostate cancer (PC) and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). However, recent studies have demonstrated that XMRV is a laboratory-derived virus resulting from genetic recombination between two mouse viral genomes during serial xenograft tissue transplantation. This study describes a phylogenetic analysis that compared XMRV with the ecotropic murine leukemia viruses (E-MLV), xenotropic MLV (X-MLV), and other retroviruses, including HTLV-1 and HIV-1. We found that sequences corresponding to three XMRV structural proteins (Env, Gag, and Pol) exhibited high degrees of homology with X-MLV (>91 %) and E-MLV (67-96 %), but not HTLV-1 (13-16 %) or HIV-1 (10-15 %), indicating that XMRV was derived from X-MLV and/or E-MLV. We then compared the infectivity of XMRV and E-MLV for human and murine lymphocytes, respectively. Results showed that human PBMCs were not susceptible to XMRV infection, suggesting that XMRV exhibits host cell tropism similar to E-MLV that only infects murine PBMCs. These data suggest that it is unlikely that this laboratory-generated retrovirus could cause disease in humans.
The Institute of Human Virology and Department of Biochemistry, Key Laboratory of Tropical Disease Control of Ministry of Education, Zhongshan School of Medicine, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510080, China.
Xiaochu
X
Ma
Shiying
S
Zhou
Meili
M
Wei
Yanxia
Y
Chen
Jiaqiang
J
Li
Weiliang
W
Xiong
Shibo
S
Jiang
Chungen
C
Pan
D000818:Animals; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D004279:DNA, Viral / Q000235:genetics*; D015686:Gene Products, env / Q000235:genetics; D015683:Gene Products, gag / Q000235:genetics; D015684:Gene Products, pol / Q000235:genetics; D006801:Humans; D007962:Leukocytes / Q000821:virology; D051379:Mice; D010802:Phylogeny; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D058008:Xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics / Q000472:pathogenicity*
D004279:DNA, Viral; D015686:Gene Products, env; D015683:Gene Products, gag; D015684:Gene Products, pol