期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2009
卷号：106
期号：32
页码：13535-13540
DOI：10.1073/pnas.0906822106
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：A long-standing question in retrovirus biology is how RNA genomes are distributed among virions. In the studies presented in this report, we addressed this issue by directly examining HIV-1 RNAs in virions using a modified HIV-1 genome that contained recognition sites for BglG, an antitermination protein in the Escherichia coli bgl operon, which was coexpressed with a fragment of BglG RNA binding protein fused to a fluorescent protein. Our results demonstrate that the majority of virions (>90%) contain viral RNAs. We also coexpressed HIV-1 genomes containing binding sites for BglG or the bacteriophage MS2 coat protein along with 2 fluorescent protein-tagged RNA binding proteins. This method allows simultaneously labeling and discrimination of 2 different RNAs at single-RNA-detection sensitivity. Using this strategy, we obtained physical evidence that virions contain RNAs derived from different parental viruses (heterozygous virion) at ratios expected from a random distribution, and we found that this ratio can be altered by changing the dimerization sequences. Our studies of heterozygous virions also support a generally accepted but unproven assumption that most particles contain 1 dimer. This study provides answers to long-standing questions in HIV-1 biology and illustrates the power and sensitivity of the 2-RNA labeling method, which can also be adapted to analyze various issues of RNA biogenesis including the detection of different RNAs in live cell imaging.
关键词：Bgl ; MS2 ; dimerization ; DIS ; fluorescent protein
