X-ray crystallographic studies of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 reverse transcriptase complexed with or without substrates or inhibitors show that the heterodimeric enzyme adopts distinct conformations that differ in the orientation of the so-called thumb subdomain in the large subunit. Site-directed spin labelling of mutated residue positions W24C and K287C is applied here to determine t...

This work reports a method for rapid amplification of the complete genome of equine influenza virus subtype 2 (H3N8). A ThermoScript reverse transcriptase instead of the avian myeloblastosis virus reverse transcriptase or Moloney murine leukemia virus reverse transcriptase was used. This enzyme has demonstrated higher thermal stability and is described as suitable to make long cDNA with a compl...

Conditions have been determined under which reverse transcriptase catalyzes the synthesis of the high yields of full length complementary deoxyribonucleic acid (cDNA). These conditions depend not only on the cencentration of deoxynucleoside triphosphates (1) but also on the concentration of reverse transcriptase. An analysis of the kinetics of cDNA synthesis and the size of cDNA synthesized as ...

We have previously reported that particles resembling retroviral particles and possessing an RNA-directed DNA polymerase activity can be prepared from platelets. Furthermore, we and others have shown that these particles are present at higher levels in patients with essential thrombocythemia and polycythemia vera. We show here that these particles package RNA molecules that encode HERV-K-relate...

Extracellular murine leukemia virus (MLV) reverse transcriptase activity was decreased by interferon treatment in four interferon-sensitive mouse cell lines which were chronic MLV producers. In three cell lines which were relatively insensitive to interferon, extracellular enzyme activity remained unchanged by interferon treatment. The concentrations of interferon used had no effect on DNA synt...

The microsomal supernatant fraction obtained from a murine cell line chronically infected with and producing Rauscher leukemia virus (JLSV-10) was found to contain two forms of RNA-directed DNA polymerase (reverse transcriptase). The two enzyme forms, neither of which is detectable in uninfected cells (JLSV-9), were initially partially purified by poly(C)-agarose chromatography, and their separ...