Intermolecular duplexes formed from polyadenylylated vaccinia virus RNA

R F Boone, R P Parr, B Moss
1979 Journal of Virology  
Approximately 15% of the polyadenylic acid-containing cytoplasmic RNA labeled from 5 to 7 h after vaccinia virus infection formed intermolecular duplex structures characterized as double-stranded RNA by RNase resistance, density in Cs2SO4, base composition, chromatography on cellulose, and ability to inhibit reticulocyte cell-free protein synthesis. Both sucrose gradient sedimentation and electron microscopic analysis indicated that the double-stranded regions were several hundred to more than
more » ... thousand nucleotide base pairs long. The doublestranded RNA, after denaturation, hybridized to approximately 25% of the vaccinia virus genome, whereas total late RNA hybridized to 42%. The finding that the duplex RNA, after denaturation, hybridized to most HindIII restriction endonuclease fragments of vaccinia virus DNA indicated that symmetrical transcription is not confined to the terminal inverted repeat sequence or to one contiguous region of the genome. Although relatively little labeled, early, polyadenylic acid-containing RNA formed RNase-resistant hybrids upon self-annealing, the percentage increased upon addition of unlabeled late RNA, indicating that the latter contains "anti-early" sequences. tion and then subjecting the cytoplasmic fraction to the above procedure.) After centrifugation, the RNA 365 on May 4, 2020 by guest
doi:10.1128/jvi.30.1.365-374.1979 fatcat:u2ujt3e3z5gz5hnpl2xz5uywxa