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Journal of Virology, August 2006, p. 8267-8270, Vol. 80, No. 16
0022-538X/06/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JVI.01915-05

The Self Primer of the Long Terminal Repeat Retrotransposon Tf1 Is Not Removed during Reverse Transcription

Angela Atwood-Moore, Kenneth Yan,{dagger} Robert L. Judson, and Henry L. Levin*{dagger}

Section on Eukaryotic Transposable Elements, Laboratory of Gene Regulation and Development, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892

Received 9 September 2005/ Accepted 19 May 2006

The long terminal repeat retrotransposon Tf1 of Schizosaccharomyces pombe uses a unique mechanism of self priming to initiate reverse transcription. Instead of using a tRNA, Tf1 primes minus-strand synthesis with an 11-nucleotide RNA removed from the 5' end of its own transcript. We tested whether the self primer of Tf1 was similar to tRNA primers in being removed from the cDNA by RNase H. Our analysis of Tf1 cDNA extracted from virus-like particles revealed the surprising observation that the dominant species of cDNA retained the self primer. This suggests that integration of the cDNA relies on mechanisms other than reverse transcription to remove the primer.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Section on Eukaryotic Transposable Elements, Laboratory of Gene Regulation and Development, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892. Phone: (301) 402-4281. Fax: (301) 496-4491. E-mail: henry_levin{at}nih.gov.

{dagger} Present address: Department of Chemical Engineering, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139.

Journal of Virology, August 2006, p. 8267-8270, Vol. 80, No. 16
0022-538X/06/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JVI.01915-05






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