Treatment with interferon reduced the content of early virus-specific RNA, as well as the content of an early viral protein (T antigen), in monkey cells acutely infected with simian virus 40 (SV40). This unexpected finding suggests either that the action of interferon involves inhibition of the transcription of early SV40 messenger RNA, or that the SV40 genome contains a "proto-early" gene whose product is required for the transcription of the remaining early genes.
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Oxman et al. (1971) studied this question.