Isolation and characterization of a new simian T-cell leukemia virus type 1 from naturally infected celebes macaques (Macaca tonkeana): complete nucleotide sequence and phylogenetic relationship with the Australo-Melanesian human T-cell leukemia virus type 1.

A study of simian T-cell leukemia virus type 1 (STLV-1) infection in a captive colony of 23 Macaca tonkeana macaques indicated that 17 animals had high human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1) antibody titers. Genealogical analysis suggested mainly a mother-to-offspring transmission of this STLV-1. Three long-term T-cell lines, established from peripheral blood mononuclear cell cultures from three STLV-1-seropositive monkeys, produced HTLV-1 Gag and Env antigens and retroviral particles. The first complete nucleotide sequence of an STLV-1 (9,025 bp), obtained for one of these isolates, indicated an overall genetic organization similar to that of HTLV-1 but with a nucleotide variability for the structural genes ranging from 7.8 to 13.1% compared with the HTLV-1 ATK and STLV-1 PTM3 Asian prototypes. The Tax and Rex regulatory proteins were well conserved, while the pX region, known to encode new proteins in HTLV-1 (open reading frames I and II), was more divergent than that in the ATK strain. Furthermore, a fragment of 522 bp of the gp21 env gene from uncultured peripheral blood mononuclear cell DNAs from five of the STLV-1-infected monkeys was sequenced. Phylogenetic trees constructed with the long terminal repeat and env (gp46 and gp21) regions demonstrated that this new STLV-1 occupies a unique position within the Asian STLV-1 and HTLV-1 isolates, being, by most analyses, related more to the Australo-Melanesian HTLV-1 topotype than to any other Asian STLV-1. These data raise new hypotheses on the possible interspecies viral transmission between monkeys carrying STLV-1 and early Australoid settlers, ancestors of the present day Australo-Melanesian inhabitants, during their migrations from the Southeast Asian land mass to the greater Australian continent.