Transactivation induced by human T-lymphotropic virus type III (HTLV III) maps to a viral sequence encoding 58 amino acids and lacks tissue specificity

The acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) retrovirus, HTLV-III/LAV, encodes a transacting factor which directly or indirectly stimulates the expression of genes linked to its LTR. To further dissect this phenomenon, we have cotransfected a biologically active molecular clone of HTLV-III and a recombinant plasmid containing an indicator gene, the bacterial gene for chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT), under the control of the HTLV-III LTR. Amplified CAT activity was detected in both lymphoid cells and fibroblasts from a number of species in the presence of the proviral DNA. Deletion experiments confirm the previous assignment of the gene required for transactivation to a region immediately 5′ to the envelope gene, and further narrow down the critical functional domain to a coding sequence of 58 codons.