Sequence identity of the terminal redundancies on the minus-strand DNA template is necessary but not sufficient for the template switch during hepadnavirus plus-strand DNA synthesis.

The template for hepadnavirus plus-strand DNA synthesis is a terminally redundant minus-strand DNA. An intramolecular template switch during plus-strand DNA synthesis, which permits plus-strand DNA elongation, has been proposed to be facilitated by this terminal redundancy, which is 7 to 9 nucleotides long. The aim of this study was to determine whether the presence of identical copies of the redundancy on the minus-strand DNA template was necessary and/or sufficient for the template switch and at what position(s) within the redundancy the switch occurs for duck hepatitis B virus. When dinucleotide insertions were placed within the copy of the redundancy at the 3' end of the minus-strand DNA template, novel sequences were copied into plus-strand DNA. The generation of these novel sequences could be explained by complete copying of the redundancy at the 5' end of the minus-strand DNA template followed by a template switch and then extension from a mismatched 3' terminus. In a second set of experiments, it was found that when one copy of the redundancy had either three or five nucleotides replaced the template switch was inhibited. When the identical, albeit mutant, sequences were restored in both copies of the redundancy, template switching was not necessarily restored. Our results indicate that the terminal redundancy on the minus-strand DNA template is necessary but not sufficient for template switching.