Characterization of snap-back RNAs in vesicular stomatitis defective interfering virus particles

VSV defective interfering particles of various sizes and from several independent sources frequently contain plus and minus strand RNA. In many cases some of the complementary strands are covalently linked as snap-back molecules. Infectious particles on the other hand package little or no plus strands. Snap-back molecules from the three different sources examined so far vary in size but appear to conform to the same overall linear duplex structure with cross-links at the ends only. They each contain a base sequence which is a subset of the next larger one and appear to correspond to unique sequences in the L cistron of the genome. Possible origins for these snap-back molecules are discussed.