Chromosomal mapping of four different integration sites of Moloney murine leukemia virus including the locus for alpha 1(I) collagen in mouse

Abstract

Infection of mouse embryos with Moloney murine leukemia virus (M-MuLV) has yielded several mouse substrains with stable germ line integration of retroviral DNA at distinct chromosomal loci (Mov loci; Jaenisch et al., 1981). There is evidence that flanking DNA sequences can have an effect on virus expression and, conversely, inserted viral DNA may affect the expression of adjacent host genes. As part of our studies on the interaction of inserted M-MuLV with the mouse genome, we have chromosomally mapped four different Mov loci by hybridizing single-copy mouse sequences, flanking the proviral DNA, to interspecies somatic cell hybrids. Furthermore, these sequences were assigned regionally by in situ hybridization to mouse metaphase chromosomes. In Mov-13 mice, M-MuLV had inserted into the alpha 1(I) collagen gene leading to early embryonic death in homozygotes. We have assigned this locus to the distal region of chromosome 11. Thus, the alpha 1(I) collagen gene is part of an evolutionarily conserved linkage group with the homologous genes on human chromosome 17. Three other proviral integration sites were mapped to chromosome 1, bands BC (Mov-7), chromosome 11, bands BC (Mov-9), and chromosome 3, bands FG (Mov-10). The Mov-10-specific probe detects an EcoRI-specific restriction fragment length polymorphism, which can make this probe a useful genetic marker.