Adenosine-5'-O-(3-thiotriphosphate) as an affinity probe for studying leader RNA's transcribed by vesicular stomatitis virus.

The ATP required for in vitro transcription by vesicular stomatitis virus can be replaced by the analogue adenosine-5'-O-(3-thiotriphosphate) without affecting the rate of transcription or the nature of the mRNA products. RNA chains (less than 5 S) initiated with adenosine-5'-O-(3-thiotriphosphate) can be isolated by affinity chromatography on mercury-agarose columns used in these experiments. At least 80% of the leader RNA synthesized in vitro by infectious B virions and 70% of the leader RNA synthesized by defective-interfering particles of vesicular stomatitis virus contained a 5'-terminal triphosphate as judged by binding to mercury-agarose of leader RNA synthesized in the presence of the 5'-thiotriphosphate adenosine analogue.