apoptosis

[LANSMAN at VAXA.CIS.UWOSH.EDU]

Date sent:  25-MAY-1995 16:07:11 
"Some viruses are able to cause apoptosis in some cell lines"

I guess I wouldn't phrase the statement quite that way.  You are, I think,
clearly correct when you ask what advantage a virus can gain by killing the 
infected cell.  One possibility is that a cell which undergoes apoptosis 
dies without provoking an inflammatory response.   I think that viruses 
which cause apoptosis do so by accident.  They may be in a host or cell 
type to which they are not well adapted.  They can even be defective.
The strain of FeLV we study in my laboratory kills feline T cells by 
causing them to undergo apoptosis.  But it is clearly defective in that
it fails to prevent superinfection because of an env protein processing 
defect.
	Many viruses, like SV40, some strains of adeno and some strains of
human papilloma virus, have evolved active mechanisms for preventing the 
apoptotic response in infected and virally transformed cells.  That makes 
better sense to me.

Bob Lansman 
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Phone (414) 424-7089  Fax (414) 424-1101