A silence element involved in Kaposis sarcoma-associated herpesvirus ORF11 gene expression.

摘要

Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV also known as Human herpesvirus 8) is the etiological agent of Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) (1, 2, 12, 15), a disease of endothe-lial origin (14). KSHV infection has also been implicated in the etiology of two B-cell lymphoproliferative diseases, e.g. primary effusion lymphoma and multicentric Castle-mans disease (3,4,18). The KSHV ORF11 is a lytic viral gene with delayed-early expression kinetics (7). Little is known about ORF 11 protein function in KS or primary effusion lymphoma tumors. The discovery of a dUTPase like domain in ORF11 coding sequence suggests that ORF11 protein may function as a dUTPase (8). It is still controversial, whether ORF 11 functions like the dUTPase, since the functional dUTPase activity has not been formally demonstrated (16). The association of ORF 11 with tegument protein ORF45 suggests that ORF 11 may function in KSHV virion morphology, latency establishment, or host interaction (22).