Identification of HTLV-III/LAV sor Gene Product and Detection of Antibodies in Human Sera

作者：Nancy Chen Kan, Genoveffa Franchini, Flossie Wong‐Staal, Garrett C DuBois, W G Robey, James A. Lautenberger, Takis S. Papas · 发表于：Science · 年份：1986 · DOI：10.1126/science.3006245 · 被引用次数：118 · 研究领域：T-cell and Retrovirus Studies、Animal Disease Management and Epidemiology、Vector-Borne Animal Diseases

The nucleotide sequence of the genome of HTLV-III, the infectious agent etiologically associated with the acquired immune deficiency syndrome, predicts a small open reading frame, termed sor, located between the pol and env genes. A DNA segment containing 82 percent of the sor region was inserted into a prokaryotic expression vector, pJL6, to determine whether sor encodes a viral protein and to gain some insight into its possible function. The bacterially synthesized sor protein reacted with sera from individuals infected with HTLV-III, indicating that sor is expressed as a protein product or products that are immunogenic in vivo. Antibodies to the purified, bacterially synthesized sor protein were found to react specifically with the same protein and also with a protein of molecular weight 23,000 (23K) in HTLV-III-infected H9 cell extracts. The 23K protein comigrated with a protein immunoprecipitated by the serum of a hemophiliac patient with antibodies to HTLV-III, suggesting that this protein is probably the sor gene product.