Human T-cell-leukemia virus type I in post-transfusional spastic paraparesis: Complete proviral sequence from uncultured blood cells

✍ Scribed by Ali Bazarbachi; Menger Huang; Antoine Gessain; Fortuna Saal; Ali Saib; Jorge Peries; Hugues De The; Francis Galibert

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1995
• Tongue: French
• Weight: 646 KB
• Volume: 63
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0020-7136
• DOI: 10.1002/ijc.2910630406

✦ Synopsis

Human-T-cell-leukemia virus type I (HTLV-I) is the causative agent of adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATL) and tropical spastic paraparesis/HTLV-I-associated myelopathy (TSP/HAM).

The different disease outcome may be attributable to subtle mutations leading to modification of viral tropism or infectivity. Initial attempts found a very high level of sequence conservation among all HTLV-I strains. However, only one complete proviral DNA sequence is reported from a TSP/HAM patient, with a provirus derived from immortalized lymphocytes, which might be expected to be a leukemogenic variant rather than a neutrotropic one. We cloned and sequenced a complete HTLV-I provirus (HTLV-IBOi) derived from the uncultured lymphocytes of a sub-acute post-transfusional TSP/HAM patient with clonal integration of HTLV-I. HTLV-lbi proviral genome is 9033 bp long, and its overall genetic organization is similar to that of the prototype HTLV-I(ATK). without major deletions or insertions. N o premature termination codon was found in the 4 open reading frames of the pX region. Divergence at the nucleotide level of HTLV-Ibi from the reported full-length HTLV-I varies from I to 9.4%. and indicates that it corresponds to a cosmopolitan genotype. This study did not identify specific sequences associated with neurotropic strains.