Activation of cellular genes by avian RNA tumor viruses.

We demonstrated previously that chicken embryo fibroblasts accumulate approximately 100 copies of embryonic globin RNA after transformation by Rous sarcoma virus. Here we demonstrate that the globin gene in chicken embryo fibroblasts is activated by infection with two other oncogenic retroviruses, avian erythroblastosis virus and strain MC-29 of avian myeloblastosis virus, which contain transforming genes unrelated in nucleotide sequence content to each other or to the Rous sarcoma virus src gene. In addition, we have measured the genetic complexity of transformation by using established techniques for determining the number of different RNA sequences in specific populations of cells. Our results indicate that transformation of chicken embryo fibroblasts by Rous sarcoma virus results in the accumulation of RNA from approximately 1000 average-sized new transcription units.