Nucleic Acids Research, 1978, Vol. 5, No. 9 3219-3230
© 1978
Articles |
Electron microscopic evidence for splicing of Moloney murine leukemia virus RNAs
*Department of Virology, The Hebrew University, Hadassah Medical School Jerusalem **Department of Organic Chemistry, The Weizmann Institute of Science Rehovot, Israel ***Department of Genetics, The Weizmann Institute of Science Rehovot, Israel
Received June 16, 1978. Poly (A) containing RNA extracted from Moloney murine leukemia virus infected mouse cells was hybridized with long single-stranded complementary DNA, prepared in detergent disrupted virions. Visualization of the hybrids in the electron microscope revealed among the structures, circles and circles with tails. Measurements performed on the circular molecules revealed two major species with circumferences corresponding to 3 and 8.2 kilobases. The latter structures had identical size to circles obtained after annealing ot cDNA with the viral genome, 35S RNA. Circularization of a small viral RNA (3 kb) from infected cells in the RNA-cDNA hybrids is a direct evidence that like the 35S RNA it shares similar nucleotide sequences at both the 5' and 3' ends. The presence of 5' end sequences common to the two RNA species indicates the existence of a spliced viral RNA. Furthermore, based on the circularization of viral RNA in the hybrids, we suggest a new way to quantitate and determine the lengths of spliced RNA in retrovirus infected cells.