HTLV-I antisense transcripts initiating in the 3'LTR are alternatively spliced and polyadenylated
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Antisense transcription in retroviruses has been suggested for both HIV-1 and HTLV-I, although the existence and coding potential of these transcripts remain controversial. Thorough characterization is required to demonstrate the existence of these transcripts and gain insight into their role in retrovirus biology. RESULTS: This report provides the first complete characterization of an antisense retroviral transcript that encodes the previously described HTLV-I HBZ protein. In this study, we show that HBZ-encoding transcripts initiate in the 3' long terminal repeat (LTR) at several positions and consist of two alternatively spliced variants (SP1 and SP2). Expression of the most abundant HBZ spliced variant (SP1) could be detected in different HTLV-I-infected cell lines and importantly in cellular clones isolated from HTLV-I-infected patients. Polyadenylation of HBZ RNA occurred at a distance of 1450 nucleotides downstream of the HBZ stop codon in close proximity of a typical polyA signal. We have also determined that translation mostly initiates from the first exon located in the 3' LTR and that the HBZ isoform produced from the SP1 spliced variant demonstrated inhibition of Tax and c-Jun-dependent transcriptional activation. CONCLUSION: These results conclusively demonstrate the existence of antisense transcription in retroviruses, which likely plays a role in HTLV-I-associated pathogenesis through HBZ protein synthesis.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".