IDENTIFICATION OF POTENTIAL HOT-SPOTS IN THE CARBOXY-TERMINAL PART OF THE EPSTEIN-BARR-VIRUS (EBV) BNLF-1 GENE IN BOTH MALIGNANT AND BENIGN EBV-ASSOCIATED DISEASES - HIGH-FREQUENCY OF A 30-BP DELETION IN MALAYSIAN AND DANISH PERIPHERAL T-CELL LYMPHOMAS

In this study, we have sequenced the C-terminal part of the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-BNLF-1 gene encoding for the latent membrane protein-1 from tissues of EBV-positive Danish Hodgkin's disease (HD) and of Danish and Malaysian peripheral T-cell lymphomas (PTLs) and from tonsils of Danish infectious mononucleosis (IM), Our study showed that some of the 7 single-base mutations and the 30-bp deletion previously detected between codons of amino acid 322 and 366 in the BNLF-1 gene of the nasopharyngeal carcinoma cell line CAO were present in all Malaysian PTLs and in 60% of the Danish PTLs. In HD and the IM cases, the mutations were present in about 30%, The 30-bp deletion and the single base mutations occurred independently, and mutations were detectable in the majority of EBV type B-positive cases, These findings suggest that the 30-bp deletion and the 7 single base mutations in the C-terminal part of the CAO-BNLF-1 gene do not characterize a new EBV type A substrain, Rather, some of the positions of single base mutations and the 30-bp deletion are hot spots that may have mutated independently through the evolution of EBV strains. (C) 1994 by The American Society of Hematology.