It is known that many types of leukemias and lymphomas are of viral origin. A new strain of immunologically deficient mice, the BALB/c x C57B1/6 beige nude mice, has been observed to develop spontaneous lymphomas of unknown origin at a high frequency. It is possible the tumors originate from a retroviral infection, which we attempted to show by detection of viral reverse transcriptase (RT) activity. We measured the (RT) activity in the supernatants of cocultures from the spleen and lymph node tissues of the beige nude animals by two methods, tritiated thymidine triphosphate incorporation in a standard RT assay, and the commercially available RT-DetectTM (DuPont) method. Of all supernatants tested, none showed a significant amount of RT activity compared with a cell line that was known to be actively producing the retrovirus MuLV. Upon electron microscopic analysis of the tumor-like cells grown in coculture, no viral particles were observed. Flow cytometric analysis of the tumor-like cells showed two general phenotypes; one predominately of a helper T cell type, and the other of a less differentiated immature thymocyte type. / Department of Biology
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/185070 |
| Date | January 1994 |
| Creators | Kercher, Lisa A. |
| Contributors | Ball State University. Dept. of Biology., Behforouz, Nancy C. |
| Source Sets | Ball State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | viii, 106 leaves : ill. ; 28 cm. |
| Source | Virtual Press |
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