Date of Award
8-1994
Degree Name
Master of Science
Department
Biological Sciences
First Advisor
Dr. Karim Essani
Second Advisor
Dr. Robert Eisenberg
Third Advisor
Dr. Fred Homa
Access Setting
Masters Thesis-Open Access
Abstract
DNA methylation has been implicated in the suppression of transcription of a large spectrum of eukaryotic genes. Frog virus 3 (FV3) contains genomic DNA that is the most extensively methylated of all known animal viruses. However, FV3 gene expression is tightly regulated in a sequential fashion in infected cells. Therefore, FV3 must have evolved mechanism(s) to overcome the inhibitory effects of DNA methylation. FV3 has been shown to induce expression of methylated foreign genes in transient transfections. This study was designed to establish if this FV3 induced expression of methylated genes could be demonstrated in stable cell lines which contain integrated foreign genes that are silenced by DNA methylation. Stably transfected simian Vero and human T-cells containing a single copy of the methylated and transcriptionally suppressed HIV-L TR CAT construct were either infected with FV3 or fused with FV3-infected fat head minnow cells. The results from these experiments lead us to conclude that FV3 infection does promote expression of a foreign, stably integrated gene (HIV-LTR) which was previously silenced by DNA methylation.
Recommended Citation
Spangler, Celene M., "Expression of Integrated and Methylated HIV-LTR in Human T-Cells and Monkey Kidney Cells by Frog Virus 3 Infection" (1994). Masters Theses. 4430.
https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/masters_theses/4430