Lack of trans-activation function for Maedi Visna virus and Caprine arthritis encephalitis virus Tat proteins

All lentiviruses contain an open reading frame located shortly upstream or inside of the env gene and encoding a small protein which has been designated Tat. This designation was mainly with respect to the positional analogy with the first exon of the trans-activator protein of the well studied human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1). In this work we comparatively studied the trans- activation activity induced by Tat proteins of the small ruminant Maedi Visna virus (MVV) of sheep and Caprine arthritis encephalitis virus (CAEV) of goats on MVV and CAEV LTRs with that induced by the human lentivirus HIV-1 on its own LTR. The HIV-1 LTR alone weakly expresses the reporter GFP gene except when the HIV-1 Tat protein is coexpressed, the GFP expression is increased 60-fold. In similar conditions only minimal trans-activation increasing two- to three-fold the MVV and CAEV LTR activity was found with MVV Tat protein, and no trans-activation activity was detected in any used cell type or with any virus strain when CAEV Tat was tested. These results indicate that the small ruminant lentiviruses (SRLV) differ from the primate lentiviruses in their control of expression from the viral LTRs and put into question the biological role of the encoded protein named "Tat."