Characterization of a replication-defective temperature-sensitive mutant of Rous sarcoma virus

Incorporation of chimeric gag protein into retroviral particles

The product of the Rous sarcoma virus (RSV) gag gene, Pr76gag, is a polyprotein precursor which is cleaved by the viral protease to yield the major structural proteins of the virion during particle assembly in avian host cells. We have recently shown that myristylated forms of the RSV Gag protein can induce particle formation with very high efficiency when expressed in mammalian cells (J. W. Wills, R. C. Craven, and J. A. Achacoso, J. Virol. 63:4331-4343, 1989). We made use of this mammalian system to examine the abilities of foreign antigens to be incorporated into particles when fused directly to the myristylated Gag protein. Our initial experiments showed that removal of various portions of the viral protease located at the carboxy terminus of the RSV Gag protein did not disrupt particle formation. We therefore chose this region for coupling of iso-1-cytochrome c from Saccharomyces cerevisiae to Gag. This was accomplished by constructing an in-frame fusion of the CYC1 and gag coding sequences at a common restriction endonuclease site. Expression of the chimeric gene resulted in synthesis of the Gag-cytochrome fusion protein and its release into the cell culture medium. The chimeric particles were readily purified by simple centrifugation, and transmission electron microscopy of cells that produced them revealed a morphology similar to that of immature type C retrovirions.

Impaired cleavage of the joint gag-pol polyprotein precursor and virion assembly in a temperature-sensitive mutant of Rous sarcoma virus

A temperature-sensitive coordinate mutant tsLA83 of Prague (PR-B) strain of Rous sarcoma virus at the nonpermissive temperature (41 degrees) produces noninfectious virus particles (NI-LA83) which contained only 3% of the reverse-transcriptase activity present in infectious virions. Analyses of [35S]methionine-labeled NI-LA83 showed the presence of all of the viral proteins except reverse transcriptase. Pulse-chase analyses of the virus-specified proteins in cells infected with LA83 or PR-B showed that the gag and glycoprotein precursors, Pr76gag and gPr95env, respectively, were processed at both 35 and 41 degrees. The reverse-transcriptase precursor, Pr180gag-pol, however, was not processed in LA83-infected cells at 41 degrees. In contrast, cells infected with LA83 or PR-B at 35 degrees as well as with PR-B at 41 degrees showed normal cleavage of Pr180gag-pol. A shiftdown of LA83-infected cells at 41 degrees to the permissive temperature 35 degrees resulted in the normal processing of Pr180gag-pol and production of infectious virus containing reverse transcriptase. Electron microscopic analysis showed that at 41 degrees cells infected with LA83 showed a large number of budding structures but fewer released particles. A shiftdown from 41 to 35 degrees resulted in an increase of virus particles with a concomitant decrease in budding structures suggesting that the processing of reverse-transcriptase precursor is related to virion assembly.