Expression of Interferon‐α and Interferon‐β Genes in Human Lymphoblastoid (Namalwa) Cells

Abstract

Treatment of human lymphoblastoid (Namalwa) cells with Sendai virus induced the coordinate synthesis of both IFN-α and IFN-β interferon mRNAs. One sub-line of Namalwa cells (WRL) produced no IFN-β activity, although IFN-β mRNA was induced and was associated with polysomes. The IFN-α mRNA was heterogeneous, ranging in size over 1.20–1.35 × 10³ bases, probably because of variation in the size of the transcribale DNA in the α-gene family. The IFN-β mRNA was monodisperse with a size of 1.05 × 10³ bases. The kinetics of accumulation and decay of both IFN-α and IFN-β mRNAs, as assessed by hybridization with cDNA probes, were very similar to those of translatable interferon mRNA, as assessed by translation in Xenopus oocytes. Treatment of the cells with butyrate or 5′-bromodeoxyuridine increased the amount of hybridizable IFN-α and IFN-β mRNA about 15-fold and 4-fold respectively, again demonstrating coordinate control of IFN-α and IFN-β production.