Mapping of a 14,000-dalton antigen to early region 4 of the human adenovirus 5 genome

An early 14,000-dalton (14K) antigen of adenovirus 5, hitherto designated 10.5K and thought to be from early region 1 (E1), has been shown to be a product of region E4 on the following evidence. In KB cells infected with the adenovirus 5 mutants dl312 and dl313, containing large deletions in region E1, this antigen was produced in a form having the same mobility as that in wild-type infections. In a range of rodent cells transformed by adenovirus 5 DNA, the synthesis of 14K antigen and the ability of these cells to elicit an immune response to this protein both correlated with the presence of sequences from region E4 of the viral genome. A 14K polypeptide was synthesized in a cell-free system programmed with infected-cell mRNA and was found to be identical to the in vivo antigen in antigenicity, in electrophoretic mobility, and in [35S]methionine-containing tryptic peptides. After labeling with [35S]methionine and several 3H-amino acids, this in vitro product gave an N-terminal sequence identical to that expected from one of the open reading frames (reading region 3) in the DNA sequence for region E4 of Hérissé et al. (Nucleic Acids Res. 9:4023-4042, 1981). It is likely that this antigen is the same as the nucleus-associated 11K polypeptide from E4 described by other authors.