Inhibition of in vitro muscle differentiation by the immortalizing oncogene Py LT-Ag

The interference of Polyomavirus (Py) early functions with in vitro myogenic differentiation is the object of this study. Single cell analysis of C2 myogenic Py infected cells showed a mutual exclusion between Py early functions and muscle gene expression. The morphological and biochemical analysis of clones obtained from C2 cells stably transfected with a plasmid carrying an ORI- Py genome, showed that myogenesis is blocked and cells display the transformed phenotype. By using plasmids separately encoding Middle T or Large T functions, the involvement of individual early viral gene products was determined. Py Middle T alone does not inhibit myotube formation even though cells are morphologically transformed. Myogenic differentiation, on the other hand, is inhibited by Py Large T. This inhibition, which is proportional to the level of Py Large T expression, does not entail to require alteration of cell growth properties and acts by blocking the expression of myogenin and terminal differentiation markers without altering the expression of the regulatory gene MyoD.