Purification of reverse transcriptase from avian retroviruses using affinity chromatography on heparin-sepharose.

Reverse transcriptase from Rous sarcoma virus and avian myeloblastosis virus was purified by a rapid two-step procedure using chromatography on phosphocellulose and heparin-Sepharose. The resulting enzyme was homogeneous, had a high specific activity and was free of contaminating nucleases. This procedure has been adapted to small-scale preparation of enzyme from mutant virus containing thermolabile reverse transcriptase, and is equally suitable for large-scale enzyme purification.