Leukemia virus infection of mammalian cells: effect on two "transformation-associated" surface properties.

We demonstrated that the productive infection of three different mammalian cell lines with two separate leukemia viruses is sufficient to induce a change in surface architecture that may be detected as enhanced agglutinability with two different plant lectins. Subsequent transformation of one of these cell lines with a chemical carcinogen did not further modify the agglutinability of the cell lines. Using a polyoma virus-transformed derivative of one of the parental lines, we have demonstrated that the LETS protein (whose absence from the surface membrane has been considered a marker of the transformed phenotype) may be present in cells displaying the capacity to plate in soft agar.