Summary
Retrovirus infectivity is the result of a cooperative interaction of three structural genes,gag, pol, andenv. Since the L-cell endogenous retrovirus (LCV) lacks theenv gene translation product, our aim was to study the biological and molecular basis of its non-infectiousness. Fusion experiments between LCV and homologous or heterologous cells demonstrated that virus production could be obtained only after LCV artificial penetration in murine cells and that the new progeny was still noninfectious. Northern blot analysis and heteroduplex mapping of the genomic RNA revealed a 0.99 kb deletion including the 3′ region of thepol reading frame, the whole xenotropic and part of the ecotropic domain of theenv gene. The results suggest that the observed deletion is responsible for the absence of the gp 70 and the gp 15 E molecules in the virion and seems therefore to be the molecular basis for the non-infectiousness of this retrovirus.
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De Giuli Morghen, C., Custode, P., Lavanga, E. et al. Biological and molecular analysis of LCV, an endogenous retrovirus with defectiveenv gene. Archives of Virology 102, 99–110 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01315566
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01315566