Regulated expression of mouse mammary tumor proviral genes in cells of the B lineage

We evaluated the expression of mouse mammary tumor proviral (MMTV) transcripts during B cell ontogeny and compared levels of RNA in B lymphocytes and B cell lines with levels in other cells of the hematopoietic lineage and in a mammary cell line. We demonstrate that MMTV transcripts are expressed as early as the pro-B cell stage in ontogeny and are expressed at basal constitutive levels throughout most of the B cell developmental pathway. The level of MMTV expression in B cells is similar to constitutive levels in mammary tissues and two to three orders of magnitude greater than in activated T cells. Levels of MMTV transcripts in B cells are not solely due to positional effects. Transient transfection assays showed that MMTV upregulation resulted from transcriptional activation of the viral LTR, indicating that there are specific and inducible transcription factors that regulate MMTV expression in B cells. MMTV transcripts could not be upregulated in pre- B cell lines but could be induced in some mature B cell lines. There was a correlation between the ability to stimulate B cells to secrete antibody and the ability to induce upregulated MMTV expression. Evidence is presented that suggests that the principal transcription factors involved in MMTV expression do not include the B cell factors OTF-2 or NF-kappa B, but rather are likely to be novel factors that are induced during differentiation to antibody secretion. A hypothesis for why mammary tumor viruses are well adapted for expression in cells of the B lineage is proposed, and the implications of this for the documented influence of MMTV gene products on the T cell repertoire are discussed.