Characterization and molecular cloning of a bovine lentivirus related to human immunodeficiency virus

An infectious virus which causes persistent lymphocytosis, lymphadenopathy, lesions in the central nervous system (CNS), progressive weakness and emaciation was previously isolated from the leukocytes of cattle. Our present studies show that this virus encodes a reverse transcriptase (RT) with Mg2+ cation preference, replicates and induces syncytia in a variety of embryonic bovine tissues in vitro, and has a morphology most similar to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Moreover, serologic analyses have demonstrated a conservation of epitopes between the major core protein of this bovine retrovirus and HIV. Shared antigenic determinants were also observed with other pathogenic retroviruses of the lentivirus subfamily. To resolve the phylogenetic relationship of this virus, proviral molecular clones were derived and used to determine the nucleotide sequence of the highly conserved RT domain. The sequence data and serologic analyses together show that this bovine retrovirus is a novel lentivirus related to HIV and other lentiviruses. We propose that this virus be tentatively named bovine immunodeficiency-like virus (BIV) to reflect its genetic relationship and biological similarity to HIV.