Research
Reduced levels of reactive oxygen species correlate with inhibition of apoptosis, rise in thioredoxin expression and increased bovine leukemia virus proviral loads
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* Corresponding author: Luc Willems willems.l@fsagx.ac.be
1 Université de Liège (ULg), Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech, Molecular and Cellular Biology, Gembloux, Belgium
2 National Veterinary Research Institute, Pulawy, Poland
3 Interdisciplinary Cluster for Applied Genoproteomics (GIGA), University of Liège (ULg), Liège, Belgium
Retrovirology 2009, 6:102 doi:10.1186/1742-4690-6-102
Published: 10 November 2009Abstract
Background
Bovine Leukemia virus (BLV) is a deltaretrovirus that induces lymphoproliferation and leukemia in ruminants. In ex vivo cultures of B lymphocytes isolated from BLV-infected sheep show that spontaneous apoptosis is reduced. Here, we investigated the involvement of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in this process.
Results
We demonstrate that (i) the levels of ROS and a major product of oxidative stress (8-OHdG) are reduced, while the thioredoxin antioxidant protein is highly expressed in BLV-infected B lymphocytes, (ii) induction of ROS by valproate (VPA) is pro-apoptotic, (iii) inversely, the scavenging of ROS with N-acetylcysteine inhibits apoptosis, and finally (iv) the levels of ROS inversely correlate with the proviral loads.
Conclusion
Together, these observations underline the importance of ROS in the mechanisms of inhibition of apoptosis linked to BLV infection.