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Journal of Virology, April 2000, p. 3613-3622, Vol. 74, No. 8
0022-538X/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Evidence for a Bidirectional Element Located Downstream
from the Herpes Simplex Virus Type 1 Latency-Associated Promoter
That Increases Its Activity during Latency
Herve
Berthomme,1,
James
Lokensgard,1
Li
Yang,2
Todd
Margolis,2 and
Lawrence T.
Feldman1,*
Department of Microbiology and Immunology,
UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, California
90095,1 and F. I. Proctor
Foundation and Department of Ophthalmology, University of
California at San Francisco, San Francisco, California
941432
Received 16 November 1999/Accepted 12 January 2000
Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) latent infection in vivo is
characterized by the constitutive expression of the latency-associated transcripts (LAT), which originate from the LAT promoter (LAP). In an
attempt to determine the functional parts of LAP, we previously demonstrated that viruses harboring a DNA fragment 3' of the LAT promoter itself were able to maintain detectable promoter expression throughout latency whereas viruses not containing this element could
not (J. R. Lokensgard, H. Berthomme, and L. T. Feldman, J. Virol. 71:6714-6719, 1997). This element was therefore called a long-term expression element (LTE). To further study the role of the
LTE, we constructed plasmids containing a DNA fragment encompassing the
LTE inserted into a synthetic intron between the reporter
lacZ gene and either the LAT or the HSV-1 thymidine kinase
promoter. Transient-expression experiments with both neuronal and
nonneuronal cell lines showed that the LTE locus has an enhancer activity that does not activate the cytomegalovirus enhancer but does
activate the promoters such as the LAT promoter and the thymidine kinase promoter. The enhancement of these two promoters occurs in both
neuronal and nonneuronal cell lines. Recombinant viruses containing
enhancer constructs were constructed, and these demonstrated that the
enhancer functioned when present in the context of the viral DNA, both
for in vitro infections of cells in culture and for in vivo infections
of neurons in mouse dorsal root ganglia. In the infections of mouse
dorsal root ganglia, there was a very high level of promoter activity
in neurons infected with viruses bearing the LAT promoter-enhancer, but
this decreased after the first 2 or 3 weeks. By 18 days postinfection,
neurons harboring latent virus without the enhancer showed no
-galactosidase (
-gal) staining whereas those harboring latent
virus containing the enhancer continued to show
-gal staining for
long periods, extending to at least 6 months postinfection, the longest
time examined.
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of
Microbiology and Immunology, 43-169CHS, UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1405. Phone: (310) 206-1014. Fax: (310) 206-3865. E-mail: lfeldman{at}microimmun.medsch.ucla.edu.

Present address: Centre de Genetique Moleculaire et Cellulaire,
UMR5534 CNRS, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Villeurbanne
Cedex,
France.
Journal of Virology, April 2000, p. 3613-3622, Vol. 74, No. 8
0022-538X/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
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