Regulation of transcription of the SV40 DNA in productively infected and in transformed cells.

Abstract

The expression of genes of the oncogenic virus SV40 is regulated. In productive infection, some genes are expressed before viral DNA replication begins (“early” genes); others are expressed after it has begun (“late” genes).1 In transformed cells, which contain the complete viral genome,2 some genes are expressed; others are not. Whether either type of regulation is at the level of transcription of viral genes is the question raised in the work to be reported here. The basic technique was hybridization of RNA synthesized in infected or transformed cells to viral DNA, and hybridization competition experiments. Results partly similar to those reported here were recently published by Aloni et al.3