To demonstrate the existence of a common site of integration in independent tumour clones, restriction mapping of the vicinity of integrated MAV-2 proviruses in nephroblastoma DNA was performed, using Southern hybridization with an MAV-2 specific probe U3(pAT). The results have shown that (1) nephroblastomas are of semiclonal origin. (2) Nephroblastoma cells contain an average of 5 clonally located integrated proviruses per diploid genome; they do not contain any detectable amount of non-integrated proviruses. (3) In the DNA from independent nephroblastoma clones, there appear at an increased frequency Tth111I fragments of 14.6 and 17.8 kb that hybridize with the U3(pAT) probe. Considering a random selection of integration sites, such coincidence is of little probability. Thus we suppose that these fragments represent a common site(s) of integration with an MAV-2 proviral insert. Two hypotheses concerning possible mechanisms of nephroblastoma induction are discussed: proto-oncogene insertional activation and anti-oncogene insertional inactivation.

Institute of Molecular Genetics Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences Praha

HRAS, EGFR, MET, and RON Genes Are Recurrently Activated by Provirus Insertion in Liver Tumors Induced by the Retrovirus Myeloblastosis-Associated Virus 2

Transcription of the chicken myb proto-oncogene starts within a CpG island