Murine leukemia virus mutant with a frameshift in the reverse transcriptase coding region: implications for pol gene structure.

The molecular defect in the nonconditional B-tropic MuLV pol mutant, clone 23 (Gerwin et al., J. Virol. 31:741-751, 1979), has been characterized by recombinant DNA technology. The entire mutant genome was cloned from an EcoRI digest of integrated cellular DNA into bacteriophage lambda Charon 4A and then subcloned at the EcoRI site of pBR322. NIH-3T3 cells transfected with the plasmid clone, termed pRTM (RTM, reverse transcriptase mutant), reproduced the properties of clone 23 virus-infected cells. In vivo ligation experiments involving cotransfection of subclones of pRTM and wild-type murine leukemia virus localized the defect in the clone 23 genome to an approximately 400-base-pair region in the pol gene between the SalI and XhoI sites. Sequence analysis of this region in the wild-type and mutant genomes revealed that the mutant has one additional C residue located 231 bases downstream of the last base of the SalI recognition site. This 1-base insertion brings three TGA termination codons into phase. Thus, the mutation in clone 23 leads to premature termination of translation, explaining the presence in clone 23 virions of a truncated polymerase with low levels of enzymatic activity. It was previously shown that the gag precursor is cleaved normally in clone 23-infected cells; therefore, if a virus-coded protease is involved in this cleavage, it must be encoded by sequences upstream of the reverse transcriptase region of the pol gene. This consideration, coupled with the observed molecular weight of the mutant polymerase and our precise determination of its C terminus, have led to a proposal for the genetic organization of the murine leukemia virus pol gene.