• Journal of Life Science
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• v.15 no.2 s.69
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• pp.186-191
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• 2005

Previous studies have demonstrated that expression of galectin-3, a member of family of beta-galactoside-binding animal lectin, is associated with pathological conditions including cancer, atherosclerosis, and viral infection. An increase of this lectin has been observed after infection by Kirsten murine sarcoma, human T lymphotropic virus-l (HTLV-l), and human immunodeficiency virus-l (HIV-l). Viral transactivation protein Tax of HTLV-l mediates the increase in the lectin. In case of HIV-1, there are evidences that Tat would be related with increase in galectin-3. We investigated whether Tat directly induced galectin-3 expression in cells. We found that HIV-l tat gene activated galectin-3 promoter in RAW264.7 cells. To demonstrate direct induction of galectin-3 by HIV-l tat, we transfected the tat into a rabbit smooth muscle cell line (Rb1) and obtained RblTatCl-2, a clone of cell stably transfected with tat gene. The Rb1TatCl-2 cells exhibited activation of LTR promoter and up-regulation of galectin-3 transcript as well as protein. Our results indicate that HIV-l tat alone is sufficient to induce the expression of galectin-3. The Rb1TatCl-2 cells could be valuable for study of the effect of HIV-1 tat on expression of cellular genes.

• The Journal of Korean Society of Virology
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.39-52
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• 1998

HIV-1 tat, a strong transactivator, is essential for the HIV-1 replication and AIDS progression. The Tat function is markedly inhibited by human anti-oncogene p53. This work was initiated to identify the p53-associated inhibitory mechanism on tat-mediated transactivation. Inhibitory function of p53 was confirmed by co-transfection of tat-expressing Jurkat cells with LTR-CAT plasmid, or H3T1 cells (LTR-CAT integrated HeLa cells) with different ratio of pSV-tat/pCDNA-p53 plasmids. Results from the direct protein-protein interaction between soluble p53 and tat, and yeast two-hybrid experiments showed that the co-suppression mechanism is unlikely to be due to the direct interaction. CAT activity was not affected by tat in Jurkat cells which were transfected with p53-promoter-CAT or p53-enhancer-CAT, suggesting that the tat-mediated p53 suppression is not directly associated with p53-promoter. Finally, we have tested protein kinase activity in p53-tranfected Jurkat cells, which might phosphorylate HIV-1 tat, resulting in inhibition of tat function. Some of our data lead us to assume that the p53-mediated tat inhibition is likely to be associated with p53-associated, signaling-mediated phosphorylation of tat, resulting in the dysfunction of tat. This study is now under investigation.

• Korean Journal of Microbiology
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 1991

Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) causes a deadly infectious disease, Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (ADIS). As a first step to develop a reliable and fast diagnostic procedure for HIV-1 infection, we cloned various immunodominant epitopes of HIV-1 in bacterial expression vectors containing tac or trp promoter. While the protein level of direct expression of gp160 was low, trp E fused gp120, gp41 and p17-p24 were produced at high levels (15-30% of total bacterial proteins) in E. coli. Since gp120 and gp41 contain relatively conserved regions which can react with antibodies in the plasma from most of HIV-1 infected individuals, these expression clones were used for large preparations of HIV-1 antigens.

• BMB Reports
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• v.51 no.6
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• pp.290-295
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• 2018

Y-box binding protein 1 (YB-1) is a member of the cold-shock domain (CSD) protein superfamily. It participates in a wide variety of cellular events, including transcription, RNA splicing, translation, DNA repair, drug resistance, and stress responses. We investigated putative functions of YB-1 in HIV-1 replication. Functional studies using overexpression or knockdown of YB-1 in conjunction with transfection of proviral DNA showed that YB-1 enhances virus production. We found YB-1 regulates HIV-1 production by stimulating viral transcription using HIV-1 LTR sequence U3RU5 with Luciferase assay. We also identified a specific region from amino acids 1 to 324 of YB-1 as necessary for the participation of the protein in the production of virions.

• Korean Journal of Microbiology
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• v.44 no.4
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• pp.277-281
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• 2008

HIV affects many organ systems. Patients with HIV infection have substantially increased risk of developing various cancers, primarily by opportunistic infection with oncogenic viruses due to their immunocompromised status. However, extensive evidence also indicates that the viral protein, Tat itself, may playas a major factor in the development of AIDS-related neoplasms. The molecular mechanism underlying Tat's oncogenic activity may include deregulation of cellular genes. Therefore, in this study, we examined the effect of HIV-l Tat on CD99 as one of the target cellular genes, which is a well-known tumor marker in several cancers. By using established HeLa clones that are stably expressing Tat, we found that CD99 is upregulated by endogenous Tat, whereas STAT3 is down regulated. Upon the screening of genes differentially expressed between Tat-stable cells and the control cells by using the gene fishing technique, DEG, we detected 3 genes which expression is affected by the presence of Tat. Furthermore, the methylation specific PCR analysis of the stably Tat expressing cell lines revealed that the CD99 promoter is de methylated in the presence of Tat. Taken together, these results open a potential role of CD99 in AIDS-related oncogenesis via epigenetic regulation by HIV-1 Tat.

• BMB Reports
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• v.51 no.8
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• pp.388-393
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• 2018

The activating transcription factor (ATF) 4 belongs to the ATF/CREB (cAMP Response Element Binding bZIP [Basic Leucine Zipper]) transcription factor family, and plays a central role in the UPR (Unfolded Protein Response) process in cells. The induction of ATF4 expression has previously been shown to increase the replication of HIV-1. However, the detailed mechanism underlying this effect and the factors involved in the regulation of ATF4 function are still unknown. Here, we demonstrate first that knocking out ATF4 using siRNA shows a strong negative effect on HIV-1 production, indicating that ATF4 is a functional positive cellular factor in HIV-1 production. To determine the mechanism by which ATF4 regulates the HIV-1 life cycle, we assessed the effect of the overexpression of wild type ATF4 and its various derivatives on HIV-1 LTR-mediated transcriptional activation and the production of HIV-1 particles. This effect was studied through co-transfection experiments with either reporter vectors or proviral DNA. We found that the N-terminal domains of ATF4 are involved in HIV-1 LTR-mediated transcriptional activation, and thus in HIV-1 production.

• BMB Reports
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.337-343
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• 2000

The human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), transactivator of transcription (Tat), is one of the viral gene products that is essential for HIV-1 replication. The HIV-l Tat protein regulates transcription from an HIV-1 long terminal repeat (LTR) and affects the gene expression of cellular proteins during infection. In order to develop an expression system to overexpress and simply purify HIV-1 Tat proteins, the HIV-1 Tat coding sequences that contain one or two exons were amplified using PCR and cloned into a pET vector, which contains a consecutive stretch of six histidine residues at the amino-terminus. The reconstituted vectors were overexpressed in the E. coli strain and the soluble recombinant proteins were purified to be homogeneity in a single step by $Ni^{+2}-nitrilotriacetic$ acid Sepharose chromatography under nondenaturing conditions. Recombinant HIV-1 Tat proteins were shown to transactivate the HIV-1 LTR promoter in a dose-dependent manner when introduced into mammalian cells. In addition, treatment of human endothelial cells with purified Tat proteins resulted in a significant increase in the level of vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1) expression. These results indicate that the recombinant HIV-1 Tat proteins are active in transactivating viral and cellular promoters. The expression and purification system described in this study will facilitate in characterizing the biological functions of the Tat proteins.

• BMB Reports
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.359-364
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• 1996

By both in vitro hydroxylamine mutagenesis of the wild type 3-phosphoglycerate kinase gene (PGK) promoter DNA and insertion of the leu2-d gene, we have created yeast expression vectors potentially useful for production of eukaryotic genes in yeast. The guanine (G) to adenine (A) change at the -3 position from the ATG start codon of the PGK promoter-based vector rendered a 6~7 times elevated expression of the adjacent eukaryotic gene, and insertion of the leu2-d gene in the vector containing the mutated PGK promoter further enhanced the expression of the gene. When expression of the AIDS virus HIV1-gagP17 gene in a lacZ fusion form was examined with this new vector, a 15 times higher level of expression than that from the original PGK promoter was observed. Northern and Southern analysis showed that this elevated expression is due to the production of a high copy number of mRNA by leu2-d gene functioning and by efficient translation of the produced mRNA. Thus, the vector that contained the A at the -3 position from the ATG start codon in the promoter region and the leu2-d gene shows increased expression capability and will be potentially useful for production of eukaryotic genes in yeast.

• The Journal of Korean Society of Virology
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.21-30
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• 1998

Synthetic genes encoding the gag p24 and the part of the envelope protein gp41 of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) were cloned and overexpressed as fusion proteins in Escherichia coli, using an expression vector carrying T7 promoter and the poly-histidine leader, sequence. The overexpressed p24 fusion protein was purified by centrifugation, Ni-affinity chromatography and CM-sepharose chromatography. The overexpressed gp41 fusion protein was purified by centrifugation, $C_4$ chromatography and DEAE-sepharose chromatography. The purified fusion proteins showed a high level of purity and immunoreactivity in SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and western blot analysis. These results suggest that this prokaryotic - expression purification method is suitable for obtaining a large amount of the viral antigen which may be useful for screening of antibodies to HIV-1 in human blood samples.

• Reproductive and Developmental Biology
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.15-20
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• 2008

Pronuclear DNA microinjection has been the most universal method in transgenic animal production but its success rate of transgenesis in mammals are extremely low. To address this long-standing problem, we used retrovirus- and lentivirus-based vectors carrying the enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) gene under the control of ubiquitously active cytomegalovirus (CMV) promoter to deliver transgenes to bovine embryos. The rate of transgenesis was evaluated by counting EGFP positive blastocysts after injection of concentrated virus stock into the perivitelline space of the bovine oocytes in metaphase II. Among two different types of lentivirus vectors derived from FIV (feline immunodeficiency virus) and HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), the former scored the higher gene transfer efficiency; almost 100% of the blastocysts developed from the oocytes infected with FIV-based vector were EGFP positive. As for the vectors derived Com HIV lentivirus, the transgenesis rate of the blastocysts was reduced to 39%.