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J. Virol. doi:10.1128/JVI.02558-06
Copyright (c) 2007, American Society for Microbiology and/or the Listed Authors/Institutions. All Rights Reserved.

Induction of mutations in Drosophila melanogaster gypsy retroelements by modulation of intracellular deoxynucleoside triphosphate pools in vivo

Institut de Génétique Humaine - CNRS, 141, rue de la Cardonille, F-34396 Montpellier Cedex 5; Unité de Rétrovirologie Moléculaire, CNRS URA 3015, Institut Pasteur, 28 rue du Dr. Roux, F-75724 Paris cedex 15; Department of Virology, Institute of Medical Microbiology, University of the Saarland, D-66421 Homburg/Saar

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: jpvart{at}pasteur.fr.

	Abstract

The retroviral mutation rate is susceptible to a number of variables including the balance between intracellular dNTP pools. While this follows from tissue culture studies, the issue has never been addressed directly in vivo. To explore this question in a tractable experimental system, we analyzed the impact of thymidine treatment on the synthesis of gypsy retroelement cDNA from Drosophila melanogaster during development through to hatching. The mutation frequency was enhanced approximately 16 fold over experimental background. Due to the lack of proof-reading, these gypsy elements represent hypervariable loci within the Drosophila genome suggesting that dNTP pool imbalances in vivo are mutagenic.