Human exon microarray analysis in CEM cells overexpressing HTLV-1 Rex

HTLV-1 is an onco-retrovirus that infects human T cells and causes poor prognosis leukaemia/lymphoma, ATL. The viral RNA binding protein, Rex, intervenes in host cell regulation of gene expression, splicing and translation mechanisms to promote viral particle replication, but the detailed mechanism of its function has not been elucidated. In the present study, we stably overexpressed HTLV-1 Rex in the human T-cell-derived cell line, CEM, and investigated effect of Rex on splicing patterns in CEM cells by exon microarray analysis. The Retrovirus expression system was used to express HTLV-1 Rex in CEM cells. CEM cells infected with a retrovirus not expressing Rex were prepared as a negative control. Retrovirus expression was performed four times and CEM-Rex and CEM-Emp (negative control) were prepared n=4 each. Total RNA was extracted from these cells and subjected to exon microarray (SureScript Whole Human Genome Exon Microarray 2x400K).