The role of the transforming a gene of SV40 in the mutagenic activity of the virus

✍ Scribed by Gorbunova, L. V. ;Varshaver, N. B. ;Marshak, M. I. ;Shapiro, N. I.

• Book ID: 104726340
• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 1982
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 444 KB
• Volume: 187
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0026-8925
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00332631

✦ Synopsis

The mutagenic activity of the tsA239 mutant of SV40 which synthetizes a defective T antigen at 40 degrees C was investigated in Chinese hamster cells under permissive and nonpermissive temperature. At 33 degrees C the virus increased the yield of 6-mercaptopurine-resistant colonies after 2 days expression time by a factor of 1.6-4 as compared with the control and raised the frequency of aberrant metaphases after the same time by a factor of 1.9-3.4. In the same experiments, with the same initially infected population of Chinese hamster cells, at 40 degrees C tsA SV40 did not induce either gene mutations or chromosome aberrations at the same early stage after infection. Presumably the activity of the A gene of SV40 is necessary not only for the transforming but also for the mutagenic effect of the virus.