Structures of endogenous nonecotropic murine leukemia virus (MLV) long terminal repeats in wild mice: implication for evolution of MLVs.

ABSTRACT: To develop a better understanding of the interaction between retroviruses and their hosts, we have investigated the polymorphism in endogenous murine leukemia proviruses (MLVs). We used genomic libraries of wild mouse DNAs and PCR to analyze genetic variation in the proviruses found in wild mouse species, including Mus musculus (M. m. castaneus, M. m. musculus, M. m. molossinus, and M. m. domesticus), Mus spretus, and Mus spicelegus, as well as some inbred laboratory strains. In this analysis, we detected several unique forms of sequence organization in the U3 regions of the long terminal repeats of these proviruses. The distribution of the proviruses with unique U3 structures demonstrated that xenotropic MLV-related proviruses were present only in M. musculus subspecies, while polytropic

SUBMITTER: Tomonaga K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC104214 | biostudies-literature | 1999 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature