title: The importance of ubiquitination and sumoylation on the transforming activity of HTLV Tax-1 and Tax-2.
abstract: Human T-cell Leukemia Virus type 1 (HTLV-1) and 2 (HTLV-2) are two closely related human retroviruses. HTLV-1 is associated with an aggressive Adult T-cell Leukemia (ATL) while there is no evidence for an association of HTLV-2 with any human malignancies. The two viruses encode transactivator proteins, Tax-1 and Tax-2 respectively. In ATL, Tax-1 is thought to play a central role in the transformation of a normal T-cell into a leukemic cell; however, it has not been entirely clear how post-translational modifications of Tax-1 influence its transforming activity. Here, we discuss three recent papers that report on the ubiquitination and sumoylation of Tax-1 and Tax-2. We comment on their divergent findings implicating the importance (or lack of importance) of these modifications and other events on Tax activation of NF-κB as related to cellular transformation.
authors.affiliation: Molecular Virology Section, Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology, National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892-0460, USA.
authors.forename: Linda
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zane
authors.forename: Kuan-Teh
authors.initials: KT
authors.lastname: Jeang
mesh_terms: D016356:Gene Products, tax / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D015368:Human T-lymphotropic virus 1 / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D006801:Humans; D058207:Sumoylation; D054875:Ubiquitination
chemical_list: D016356:Gene Products, tax; C514970:tax protein, Human T-lymphotrophic virus 1