Two distinct endogenous type C viruses isolated from the asian rodent Mus cervicolor: conservation of virogene sequences in related rodent species

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Abstract
The cocultivation of a lung cell line from the Southeast Asian mouse M. cervicolor with cells from heterologous species resulted in the isolation of 2 new distinct type C viruses. Both viruses are endogenous to M. cervicolor and are present in multiple copies in the cellular DNA of these mice. One of the viruses, designated M. cervicolor type C I, replicates readily in the SIRC rabbit [cornea] cell line and is antigenically related to the infectious primate type C viruses isolated from a woolly monkey (simian sarcoma-associated virus) and gibbon apes (gibbon ape leukemia virus). This virus is also closely related by immunological and nucleic acid hybridization criteria to a type C virus previously isolated from a 2nd Asian murine species, M. caroli. The isolation of the M. cervicolor type C I virus thus provides further evidence that the infectious primate type C viruses originated by trans-species infection of primates by an endogenous virus of mice. The 2nd virus, designated M. cervicolor type C II, replicates well in various cell lines derived from the laboratory mouse M. musculus. While antigenically related to type C viruses derived from M. musculus, the M. cervicolor type C II virus isolate can be readily distinguished from standard murine leukemia viruses. Both new type C viruses from M. cervicolor are unrelated to the previously described retrovirus (M432) isolated from the same Mus species. The DNA of M. cervicolor therefore contains multiple copies of at least 3 distinct classes of endogenous viral genes. An examination of the cellular DNA of other rodent species for nucleic acid sequences related to the genomes of both M. cervicolor type C I and II reveals that both viruses were highly conserved evolutionarily, and that other species of rodents, such as laboratory mice and rats, contain endogenous virogenes related to those in the DNA of M. cervicolor.