Figure 1.

Early bovine leukemia virus replication in experimentally infected sheep. Vertical arrows represent the times at which blood samples were collected. A fluctuation of circulating leukocyte counts over time. ----- mean leukocyte counts of the 4 experimentally BLV-infected sheep aligned relative to the date of seroconversion -x-x-x-x- leukocyte counts of the two uninfected sheep, aligned relative to the date of injection of the non-infectious solution. B BLV early replication in experimentally infected sheep. All curves are aligned relative to the date of seroconversion (S). Time (t) is expressed in days. For each animal the first 2 curves represent the temporal fluctuation of the B cell count (black squares) and proviral loads (open circles); the second 2 curves represent the clonality of BLV positive circulating cells (black rhombuses, clones = 1200 copies in 1 mcg of circulating DNA; white rhombuses, clones >1200 copies in 1 mcg of circulating DNA); bottom curves represent the frequency of RT-associated substitutions (black circles) and of somatic mutations (open circles); the blue bars represent, at each time, the number of sequenced BLV integration sites.