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Updated: Aug 14, 2026

Production of Replication-Defective Retrovirus by Transient Transfection of 293T cells
Published on: December 4, 2007
Defective retroviruses can disperse in the human genome by intracellular transposition
1Unité de-Biochimie-Enzymologie, CNRS U147 et INSERM U140, Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France.
Abstract:
Using an assay for retrotransposition detection (T. Heidmann, O. Heidmann, and J. F. Nicolas, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 85:2219-2223, 1988), we demonstrated that a defective retrovirus deleted for the gag, pol, and env open reading frames can disperse in the genome of human HeLa cells by intracellular transposition, at a frequency close to 10(-6) events per cell per generation. Transposition requires cooperation in trans for the gag and pol gene products and may be associated with the release of low amounts of noninfectious retroviruslike particles which are the hallmarks but not the intermediates of this transposition process. Similar events could account for the dispersion at high copy number of some of the human endogenous sequences related to retroviruses and for the occurrence of noninfectious retroviruslike particles in human placenta and several tumor cell lines (reviewed by E. Larsson, N. Kato, and M. Cohen, Curr. Top. Microbiol, Immunol, 148:115-132, 1989).
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