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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2011 Oct 1.
Published in final edited form as: Mol Aspects Med. 2010 Jun 4;31(5):344–349. doi: 10.1016/j.mam.2010.05.004

Fig 3.

Fig 3

Life cycle of HTLV-1 virus and related regulatory proteins. Four regulatory phases control the life cycle of HTLV-1 virus: 1) Tax and Rex are produced first from completely spliced mRNA, no other viral proteins are co-produced at this time. 2) Tax trans-activates LTR promoter to generate viral RNAs which are completely spliced. 3) Sufficient amount of Rex protein is accumulated, inhibit splicing and export non-spliced mRNA to the cytoplasm to form the viral particles. 4) p30 is expressed from an alternatively spliced mRNA; p30 interferes with Tax function and binds to and retains tax/rex mRNA in the nucleus leading to viral repression.