Description
Human T-lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) is associated with the development of Adult T-cell Leukemia, an aggressive CD4+ T-cells malignancy. Here, we have developed a new procedure to infect humanized mice with proviruses displaying specific mutations, such as one leading to the loss of the PDZ domain-binding motif (PBM) of Tax. In order to specifically analyze the in vivo role of the PBM of Tax, a comparative study of infected hu-mice was performed. We used next-generation sequencing to perform genome-wide transcriptomic analysis of T-cells infected with wild-type HTLV-1 virus or with virus bearing a mutated form of Tax lacking the PBM. Our results suggest that Tax PBM might be involved in the regulation of genes implicated in proliferation, apoptosis and cytoskeleton organization. Overall design: mRNA profiles of T-cells obtained from hu-Mice infected with wild-type or Tax-PBM HTLV-1 were generated by deep-sequencing in triplicates using Illumina's Hiseq3000 platform.