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Abstract
Productive infection with HIV-1, the virus responsible for AIDS, requires the involvement
of host cell factors for completion of the replicative cycle, but the identification
of these factors and elucidation of their specific functions has been difficult. A
human cDNA, TRBP, was recently cloned and characterized as a positive regulator of
gene expression that binds to the TAR region of the HIV-1 genome. Here we demonstrate
that this factor is encoded by a gene, TARBP2, that maps to human chromosome 12 and
mouse chromosome 15, and we also identify and map one human pseudogene (TARBP2P) and
two mouse TRBP-related sequences (Tarbp2-rs1, Tarbp2-rs2). The map location of the
expressed gene identifies it as a candidate for the previously identified factor encoded
on human chromosome 12 that has been shown to be important for expression of HIV-1
genes. Western blotting indicates that despite high sequence conservation in human
and mouse, the TARBP2 protein differs in apparent size in primate and rodent cells.