viruses Article Proviruses with Long-Term Stable Expression Accumulate in Transcriptionally Active Chromatin Close to the Gene Regulatory Elements: Comparison of ASLV-, HIV- and MLV-Derived Vectors Dalibor Miklík 1,2, Filip Šenigl 1 and Jiˇrí Hejnar 1,* 1 Institute of Molecular Genetics, Czech Academy of Sciences, Videnska 1083, CZ-14220 Prague 4, Czech Republic;
[email protected] (D.M.);
[email protected] (F.S.) 2 Faculty of Science, Charles University, Albertov 6, CZ-12843 Prague 2, Czech Republic * Correspondence:
[email protected] Received: 29 January 2018; Accepted: 6 March 2018; Published: 8 March 2018 Abstract: Individual groups of retroviruses and retroviral vectors differ in their integration site preference and interaction with the host genome. Hence, immediately after infection genome-wide distribution of integrated proviruses is non-random. During long-term in vitro or persistent in vivo infection, the genomic position and chromatin environment of the provirus affects its transcriptional activity. Thus, a selection of long-term stably expressed proviruses and elimination of proviruses, which have been gradually silenced by epigenetic mechanisms, helps in the identification of genomic compartments permissive for proviral transcription. We compare here the extent and time course of provirus silencing in single cell clones of the K562 human myeloid lymphoblastoma cell line that have been infected with retroviral reporter vectors derived from avian sarcoma/leukosis virus (ASLV), human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV) and murine leukaemia virus (MLV). While MLV proviruses remain transcriptionally active, ASLV proviruses are prone to rapid silencing. The HIV provirus displays gradual silencing only after an extended time period in culture.