THE B-SUBGROUP BOVINE PAPILLOMAVIRUSES LACK AN IDENTIFIABLE E6 OPEN READING FRAME

Analysis of the corrected DNA sequence for the bovine papillomavirus type 4 (BPV4) genome revealed that there is no open reading frame (ORF) that might encode an E6 protein. The other two B subgroup bovine papillomaviruses, BPV3 and BPV6, were found to have the same arrangement of ORFs in this region as BPV4. Thus, we conclude that E6 functions are either not required by these viruses or are performed by another viral (or host) protein. Furthermore, the position that might be expected to be occupied by E6, between the long control region and the E7 ORF, contains the E8 ORF, which has the potential to encode a 42-residue polypeptide with considerable similarity to the E5 transforming protein of BPV1. Therefore, it appears that during the evolution of the B subgroup of BPVs, genomic rearrangements may have occurred resulting in the present layout of the early ORFs.