Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), a human gammaherpesvirus, possesses a unique set of latent genes whose constitutive expression in B cells leads to cell growth transformation. The initiation of this B-cell growth transformation programme depends on the activation of a viral promoter, Wp, present in each tandemly arrayed BamHI W repeat of the EBV genome. In order to examine the role of the BamHI W region in B cell infection and growth transformation, we constructed a series of recombinant EBVs carrying different numbers of BamHI W repeats and carried out B cell infection experiments. We concluded that EBV requires at least 2 copies of BamHI W repeats to be able to activate transcription and transformation in resting B cells in vitro. At least 5 copies of BamHI W were required for optimal transcription and transformation; while increasing the number beyond 5 copies had no further effect. Experiments to try to rescue the impaired virus indicated that the expression of sufficient levels of EBNA-LP and EBNA2 from Wp are the key determinants of virus-driven B cell transformation. We believe that EBV has evolved to contain multiple copies of BamHI W repeats to ensure high levels of Wp-initiated transcripts immediately post infection.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:530876 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Kao, Kuan-Yu |
| Publisher | University of Birmingham |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/1493/ |
Page generated in 0.002 seconds