Requirement of an adenylic acid-rich segment for the infectivity of encephalomyocarditis virus RNA.

About 80% of the RNA molecules extracted from encephalomyocarditis (EMC) virus were bound by oligo(dT)-cellulose under conditions which bind poly(A) but not poly(C) nor ribosomal RNA. This shows that most EMC virus RNA molecules contain a poly(A) tract. Both bound and unbound fractions contained RNA molecules of apparently the same size when examined by sucrose gradient sedimentation, but the bound fraction contained an adenylic acid-rich segment of about 20 nucleotides long, whereas the unbound RNA did not. The bound RNA had 200 times the specific infectivity of the unbound RNA which suggests that the poly(A) tract present in EMC virus RNA is required for infectivity.