Dissociation of transforming and trans-activation functions for bovine papillomavirus type 1

It has been shown that genetic information encoded by the 3' open reading frames (ORFs), E2, E3, E4 and E5, of bovine papillomavirus type 1 (BPV-1), is sufficient to induce cellular transformation of certain mouse cells. The product of the E2 ORF has further been shown to be responsible for the trans-activation of a transcriptional regulatory element located in the noncoding region (NCR) of the BPV-1 genome. To examine whether or not the E2 trans-activation function is encoded by the same gene that encodes the 3' ORF viral transformation function, we have now analysed the expression of the trans-activation function in series of mouse C127 cells transformed by BPV-1 deletion mutants. In addition, using mutated complementary DNA clones generated by the insertion of a premature translational termination linker into different sites of a BPV-1 cDNA clone containing the 3' ORFs intact, we demonstrate that transformation and transcriptional trans-activation functions can be dissociated and that they map respectively to the E5 and E2 ORFs.