Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 tat gene enhances human cytomegalovirus gene expression and viral replication

Clonal lines of human rhabdomyosarcoma (RD) cells, constitutively expressing human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) tat gene (RD tat cell lines) showed enhanced expression of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) immediate-early (IE) and late (L) proteins upon HCMV infection, as compared with control RD cells. One of the RD tat cell lines produced infectious HCMV. The RD-tat cell lines, following transfection with recombinant plasmids containing the full length of the HCMV-IE enhancer/promoter linked to the bacterial chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT) gene, exhibited an increased CAT expression by the tat product. A chronically HIV-1-infected human T-lymphoid cell line, SupT1, superinfected with HCMV, expressed HCMV-IE proteins while the parental SupT1 cells infected with HCMV were negative. Parental SupT1 cells coinfected with HIV-1 and HCMV also expressed HCMV-IE proteins, indicating that HIV-1-encoded proteins exert a positive regulatory effect on HCMV expression.