Homo sapiens Genome sequencing. Homo sapiens

Clonal expansion of transformed human T-cell leukemia virus type-1 (HTLV-1) –infected cells leads to onset of adult T-cell leukemia (ATL), an aggressive lymphoid malignancy with a poor prognosis. HTLV-1-infection is the direct cause of ATL onset, and integration of the provirus DNA into the human genome is essential for clonal expansion of leukemic cells. We analyzed clinical samples from HTLV-1–infected individuals in a variety of clinical status with a broad range of proviral loads using a high-throughput method that enables isolation of HTLV-1 integration sites and accurate measurement of the size of infected clones.