Berkhout B, Klaver B, Das A T
Department of Virology, University of Amsterdam, Academic Medical Center, The Netherlands.
Virology. 1995 Feb 20;207(1):276-81. doi: 10.1006/viro.1995.1077.
A comparative sequence analysis of part of the RNA genome containing the poly(A) signal of different groups of immunodeficiency viruses, including human types 1 and 2, simian types mandrill, african green monkey, and sykes, reveals the conservation of certain structural features despite the divergence in sequence. In all cases, the AAUAAA signal was found to be flanked by nucleotide segments that can basepair, thus forming a hairpin structure with the poly(A) signal in the single-stranded loop. The fact that both this stem-loop structure and its thermodynamic stability are well conserved suggests a biological function for this structure motif [corrected]. Consistent with this idea, we demonstrate that stabilization or destabilization of the stem region does severely inhibit the replication potential of the HIV-1 virus.
对不同组免疫缺陷病毒（包括人类1型和2型、猿猴中的山魈型、非洲绿猴型和锡克型）的包含聚腺苷酸（poly(A)）信号的RNA基因组部分进行比较序列分析，结果显示，尽管序列存在差异，但某些结构特征仍具有保守性。在所有情况下，均发现AAUAAA信号两侧的核苷酸片段能够形成碱基对，从而与单链环中的聚腺苷酸信号形成发夹结构。这种茎环结构及其热力学稳定性均得到很好的保守，这一事实表明该结构基序具有生物学功能[已修正]。与此观点一致的是，我们证明茎区域的稳定或不稳定会严重抑制HIV-1病毒的复制潜能。
