Disturbance of genetic information by a ribonucleotide analogue

The synthetic base analogue, 6H,8H-3,4-dihydropyrimido[4,5-c][1,2]oxazin-7-one (P), can efficiently base pair with A and G. We have previously demonstrated that the deoxyribonucleoside of P (dP) is highly mutagenic and that this is due to the ambiguous base pairing ability of P. In this work, we have shown that the ribonucleoside triphosphate of P (rPTP) induces C to U mutation on an in vitro model of retroviral genomic RNA replication pathway. This mutation induction by rPTP may be specific to retroviruses, since host genomic DNA should not be affected by such a ribonucleotide analogue, although temporary transcription-translation errors may occur.