Nunez RM, Sanchez ML; American Society for Microbiology. General Meeting.
Abstr Gen Meet Am Soc Microbiol. 1995; 95: 587 (abstract no. T-30).
Uni. Bern, Switzerland.
Since its development the cell line U937, a histiocytic lymphoma derived cell line, has been used extensively for immunological studies, because of its phenotype characteristics of monocyte-macrophage. However, so far viral particles have not been found. Moreover, during experiments aimed to select adherent clones of U937, it was found that some of these clones had a significant expression of CD1a while the original U937 did not. Further analysis of the adherent clones demonstrated very high reverse transcriptase activity. Cell culture supernatants filtered through 0.2 micron filters were able to immortalize mononuclear cells from normal donors. However, T cells selected by SRBC rosette were destroyed. These immortalized cells also express CD1a. FACS surface and cytoplasmic staining of the U937 derived clones using antibodies against HIV, HTLV-I and HTLV-II demonstrated some cross reactivity but not identity. cDNA synthesis followed by PCR analysis using primers specific for HIV yielded products with unexpected sized for HIV. Preliminary nucleotide sequence information of these PCR products demonstrated that there are short segments with up to 60% homology to HIV, but also other regions without homology at all. In summary we describe a virus originating from adherent clones of U937, that has reverse transcriptase, with immortalizing activity for mononuclear cells but lethal for T cells, and without identity to the HIV, HTLV-I and HTLV-II.
Publication Types:
Keywords:
- AIDS Vaccines
- Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
- Base Sequence
- Cell Line
- Clone Cells
- DNA Primers
- HIV
- HIV Infections
- HIV Seropositivity
- HTLV-I Infections
- Human T-lymphotropic virus 1
- Human T-lymphotropic virus 2
- Polymerase Chain Reaction
- RNA-Directed DNA Polymerase
- Retroviridae
- T-Lymphocytes
- genetics
Other ID:
UI: 102215194
From Meeting Abstracts