Abstract
NEW antigenic specificities expressed at the surface of virus-transformed cells are considered to be due to the insertion of virus structural proteins into the plasma membrane (for review see ref. 1). However, there is evidence far the non-identity of some tumour antigens at the surface of virus-transformed cells with virion proteins2β5. For example, in the avian system, Rous sarcoma virus (RSV)-induced chicken sarcomas express at their surface a tumour-specific surface antigen (TSSA). The idea that the TSSA is not a virus structural protein, although under control of a viral gene, has been debated3,6β8. We report here our studies on the antigenic composition of hamster fibroblasts transformed in vitro by RSV mutants, either defective for the synthesis of envelope glycoproteins (envβ) or temperature-sensitive for the ability to transform the host cell (ts). We found that these cells expressed at their surface a tumour-specific antigen with the following properties: (1) it is expressed at the surface of hamster cells transformed by RSV but not by unrelated RNA or DNA oncogenic viruses; (2) it is expressed by RSV-transformed cells of different animal species; (3) it is not one of the known structural virion proteins; (4) in the temperature-sensitive mutant-transformed cells its expression correlates with the expression of the transforming gene.
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COMOGLIO, P., PRAT, M. & BERTINI, M. A virus-induced non-virion antigen specific for transformation at the surface of RSV-transformed fibroblasts. Nature 273, 381β383 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1038/273381a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/273381a0
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