Selection of methionine tRNAs by avian oncornaviruses

The free 4S RNA of avian RNA tumor viruses is greatly enriched in one of the four methionine tRNAs of the host cells, tRNA4Met. On the assumption that viral tRNAMet forms are identical to the corresponding tRNAs of mouse or chick cells, the following conclusions were drawn concerning the tRNAMet content of oncornaviruses: (1) tRNAMet species may be compartmentalised within the host cells, and the viral tRNA pool could reflect the cellular compartment in which viral maturation takes place since tRNAMet forms distribute unevenly between different fractions of a cell homogenate. (2) tRNA4Met appears to have no special role in the modulation of protein synthesis in as much as no functional difference between tRNA2Met and tRNA3Met, tRNA4Met could be demonstrated in in vitro protein synthesising systems. (3) tRNA4Met differs in nucleotide sequence from all other host cell tRNAMet forms except possibly tRNA2Met. The nucleotide sequences of two tRNAMet species, tRNA1Met and tRNA4Met, have already been determined and the sequence of another host cell tRNAMet, tRNA3Met, was derived from the analogy of its sequence to that of tRNA4Met since the two molecules differ in only 6 nucleotides out of 76. (4) Avian myeloblastosis virus reverse transcriptase has been shown to bind specifically tRNA4Met and tRNATrp in whole cell tRNA and therefore the free tRNA4Met in the virion particle may exist substantially bound to virion-associated transcriptase.