Defective Replication in Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 When Non-\batchmode \documentclass[fleqn,10pt,legalpaper]{article} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amsmath} \pagestyle{empty} \begin{document} \(\mathrm{tRNA}_{3}^{\mathrm{Lys}}\) \end{document}Primers Are Used for Reverse Transcription

Abstract

\batchmode \documentclass[fleqn,10pt,legalpaper]{article} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amsmath} \pagestyle{empty} \begin{document} \(tRNA_{3}^{Lys}\) \end{document} , the primer for reverse transcriptase in human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), anneals to the primer binding site (PBS) in HIV-1 RNA. It has been shown that altering the PBS and U5 regions upstream of the PBS in HIV-1 so as to be complementary to sequences in tRNA ^Met or tRNA ^His will allow these tRNA species to be stably used as primers for reverse transcription. We have examined the replication of these mutant viruses in Sup-T1 cells. When Sup-T1 cells are infected by cocultivation with HIV-1-transfected 293T cells, viruses using tRNA ^His or tRNA ^Met are produced at rates that are approximately 1/10 or 1/100, respectively, of rates for wild-type virions that use \batchmode \documentclass[fleqn,10pt,legalpaper]{article} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amsmath} \pagestyle{empty} \begin{document} \(tRNA_{3}^{Lys}\) \end{document} . When Sup-T1 cells are directly infected with equal amounts of these different viruses isolated from the culture supernatant of transfected 293T cells, virions using tRNA ^Met are produced at 1/100 the rate of wild-type viruses, and production of virions using tRNA ^His is not detected. Both wild-type and mutant virions selectively package tRNA ^Lys only, and examination of the ability of total viral RNA to prime reverse transcription in vitro indicates a >80% reduction in the annealing of tRNA ^His or tRNA ^Met to the mutant viral RNAs. PCR analysis of which of the three primer tRNAs is used indicates that only \batchmode \documentclass[fleqn,10pt,legalpaper]{article} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amsmath} \pagestyle{empty} \begin{document} \(tRNA_{3}^{Lys}\) \end{document} is detected as primer in wild-type virions and only tRNA ^His is detected as primer in virions containing a PBS complementary to tRNA ^His , while the mutant viruses containing a PBS complementary to tRNA ^Met use both tRNA ^Met and \batchmode \documentclass[fleqn,10pt,legalpaper]{article} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amsmath} \pagestyle{empty} \begin{document} \(tRNA_{1,2}^{Lys}\) \end{document} as primer tRNAs.