Methods for analyzing messenger discrimination in eukaryotic initiation factors.
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to R E Thach.
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The mouse plasmacytoma cell line, MOPC-460, produces both intracisternal and intracytoplasmic A-type particles when grown as a solid tumor. When these cells are grown either as an ascites tumor or in tissue culture, a third type of particle is produced extracellularly. This particle, the "myeloma-associated virus," is closely related to, and probably an alternate form of, the intracisternal A-type particle. The proteins present in these two types of particles were compared by tryptic peptide mapping. Both types of particles were found to contain essentially the same major proteins of 76,000 (p76), 68,000 to 70,000 (p68-70), and 45,000 (p45) daltons, in addition to varying amounts of smaller proteins. The relative proportions of all these proteins varied from preparation to preparation in an unpredictable way. The p45, p68, and p70 proteins all contained sequences found in p76, suggesting precursor-product relationships of p76 leads to p70 leads to p45 for solid tumor A-type particles and p76 leads to p68 leads to p45 for extracellular myeloma-associated virus. In addition, immune precipitation experiments have established that p76 contains at least some of the antigenic determinants characteristic of murine leukemia virus p30. This confirms earlier nucleic acid hybridization studies which indicated a moderate degree of relatedness between MOPC-460 A-type particles and several standard murine leukemia and sarcoma viruses. Taken together, our results provide evidence supporting the concept that MOPC-460 A-type particles may represent aberrant forms of C-type murine viruses.
MOPC-460 mouse plasmacytoma cells produce intracellular A-type particles and extracellular oncornavirus-like particles ("myeloma-associated virus," abbreviated MAV). The genomes of these two particles are closely related. During attempts to establish infections with MOPC-460 extracellular particles, we isolated ecotropic and xenotropic infectious forms of murine leukemia virus. We have investigated the relation of these isolates to A-type particles and to MAV by nucleic acid hybridization. Using complementary DNA probes prepared from the two isolates, we found that these infectious murine leukemia viruses differ from A-type particles and from MAV. Moreover, we found that MAV is the predominant extracellular component: the ecotropic and xenotropic forms of murine leukemia virus were present at only low levels (less than 5%) in MAV preparations. Neither the SC-1 cells infected with ectropic murine leukemia virus nor the mink cells infected with xenotropic murine leukemia virus showed any A-type particles in their cytoplasm when examined by electron microscopy. Our inability to demonstrate infection by the A-type particle-related component, MAV, suggests that these may be defective.
The relative initiation rates for encephalomyocarditis virus mRNA and host mRNA's in infected cells were measured using two independent techniques. In both cases the results showed that viral mRNA initiates at a much higher rate than host mRNA'S. This difference was observed midway in the infectious cycle, well before virus-induced cytopathic effects (leakage of low-molecular-weight metabolites, failure to exclude trypan blue) were apparent. These results confirm that encephalomyocarditis viral mRNA is a more efficient initiator than host mRNA's in vivo, as has previously been demonstrated in in vitro experiments.
Inhibitors of elongation steps in protein synthesis such as cycloheximide and anisomycin mimic interferon treatment in that they specifically inhibit the synthesis of certain viral proteins. These specific effects are seen only at very low concentrations of the antibiotics, under conditions where host cellular protein synthesis, as well as cell viability, are not severely reduced. A qualitatively as well as quantitatively close correlation between the effects of the two types of agents has been established for encephalomyocarditis virus, vesicular stomatitis virus and murine leukemia virus protein synthesis. It is concluded that one of the primary mechanisms of interferon action may be a nonspecific retardation of one or more elongation steps, and that this may be sufficient to account for its effects on the replication of certain viruses such as encephalomyocarditis and vesicular stomatitis viruses.
Encephalomyocarditis viral RNA has previously been shown to outcompete host cellular mRNA has for translation in vitro in crude and fractionated protein synthesizing systems. In the present communication it is shown that the competition is regulated by an initiation factor or complex of factors, and not the 40S initiation complex per se. The factor primarily involved is the murine equivalent of a component present in a partially purified preparation of rabbit initiation factor M3. Both the murine and rabbit factors are clearly messenger discriminatory.
Oncornavirus-like particles of the "A" (both intracisternal and intracytoplasmic) and "B" or "C" (extracellular) types are produced by murine MOPC-460 myeloma cells. This communication describes a comparative study on tracisternal A and extracellular particles. Both types of particles contain an RNA-dependent DNA polymerase activity, traces of 35S and 70 S RNA in addition to larger amounts of degraded RNA, and proteins of approximately 76,000 and 45, 000 daltons. The 76,000-dalton proteins from intracisternal A and extracellular particles have the same cyanogen bromide peptides. Hybridization kinetic analysis indicates that the RNAs in the two particles are identical or very closely related and share partial homology with Moloney leukemia virus RNA. In contrast, the particles appear to have little or no relationship to murine mammary tumor virus as judged by several different criteria. Electron microscope studies indicate that the extracellular particles arise from the budding of core components through the plasma membrane. These results suggest that the intracisternal A and extracellular oncornavirus-like particles produced by MOPC-460 cells are closely related.
Our findings may be summarized as follows: (a) a DNA polymerase is associated with murine type A particles, which is very similar to the reverse transcriptases found in true RNA tumor viruses; (b) the majority of the RNA isolated from A particles is of low molecular weight (probably due to degradation), byt appears to contain an amount of unique sequence information comparable to that found in other oncornavirus particles. These results suggest that A-type particles may be very similar, and perhaps related, to the two other classes (B and C) of oncornaviruses.
The RNA-dependent DNA polymerase present in intracisternal A-type particles from mouse myeloma tumor cells has been studied. This polymerase can use either endogenous A particle RNA or an exogenous synthetic polynucleotide [poly (rA)] as a template. The DNA reaction product is small (4S-10S) and over 90% of it hybridizes to A particle RNA, whereas up to 50% of it hybridizes to murine sarcoma-leukemia virus RNAs. The RNA isolated from purified A particles is generally of low molecular weight (5S-15S) but contains small amount of 70S and 35S components. These results suggest that A-type particles may be related to C-type oncornaviruses.
Translation of encephalomyocarditis virus RNA in a cell-free system from uninfected Krebs ascites cells results in the synthesis of a major polypeptide product with a molecular weight of approximately 112,000. In contrast, when the viral RNA is translated in a cell-free system from virus-infected cells, this polypeptide is absent and the largest polypeptide produced has a molecular weight of about 100,000. This latter polypeptide comigrates on sodium dodecyl sulfate-gels with in vivo virus capsid precursor A, and the two have identical patterns of CNBr-generated peptides. A polypeptide having a molecular weight of 12,500 is also a major translation product in the system from infected cells (but not from uninfected cells). This polypeptide appears to be generated by cleavage of the NH-2-terminal portion of the viral RNA-dependent polypeptides by a proteolytic activity present in the infected cell-free system. This proteolytic activity copurifies with the 23,000-molecular weight viral capsid protein gamma, found in infected cells, through chromatography on DEAE-cellulose and cellulose phosphate. This suggests that gamma is itself a proteolytic enzyme involved in maturation of the viral capsid precursor.