[Analysis of the cellular tropism of JC virus with archetypal regulatory region].

JC virus (JCV) with an archetypal regulatory region (archetype) has been cloned from urines of a healthy individual. It has been suggested that the regulatory region of prototype JC virus (PML type) isolated from brain of PML patient was derived from that of the archetype by deletion and duplication. Biological characteristics of archetypal JCV, however, have not been fully studied. In the present study we examined the infectivity of archetypal JCV (CY), PML-type JCV (Mad-1) and Chimera JCV (Mad-1/CR-CY), in which the regulatory region is composed of CY and the other region Mad-1. DNAs from the three JCV types were transfected into COS-7 (monkey kidney cells transformed with SV40 T) and IMR-32 (human neuroblastoma cell). COS-7 was permissive for all three types, but IMR-32 was only infected with Mad-1. Infected DNAs were confirmed by Southern blotting, and the constancy of the regulatory regions before and after transmission was verified by DNA sequencing. The results showed that the viral regulatory region was related to viral cell tropism and that PML type regulatory region would be necessary for IMR-32 to propagate. The fact that COS-7 was susceptible for all three types may be explained by the function of SV40 T protein. In addition, we first succeeded in the propagation of CY in COS-7, which would provide a useful system to analyze the mechanism of persistent infection of archetypal JCV.