Lack of evidence for the involvement of type-C and type-B retroviruses in radiation leukemogenesis of NFS mice.

Southern blot analysis revealed no difference between the DNA from radiation-induced thymic lymphomas and DNA from normal NFS mice. The probes used in the Southern blot analyses used a murine leukemia virus (MuLV) env DNA probe (pXenv), which specifically hybridizes with xenotropic and recombinant viral env genes, and mouse mammary tumor virus (MMTV) DNA probes (MMTV gag-pol, MMTV env, and MMTV LTR). This suggests that radiation leukemogenesis was not associated with gross alteration of the organization of these retroviral genomes. In DNA from radiation-induced thymic lymphoma, there was no indication of gross rearrangement in the common integration site of MuLV, pim-1, or in the common integration sites of MMTV, int-1 and int-2. Dot blot analysis of RNA from radiation-induced thymic lymphomas and normal thymuses demonstrated that there was no substantial difference between them in the expression of retroviral sequences, pim-1, pvt-1, int-1, or int-2, although transcripts that could be hybridized to the retroviral sequences were slightly elevated in some radiation-induced thymic lymphomas. These results show that radiation leukemogenesis does not appear to involve the activation of endogenous type-C and type-B retroviruses.