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The where, what and how of ribosomal frameshifting in retroviral protein synthesis
1Laboratory of Experimental Carcinogenesis, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892.
Abstract:
The gag and pol genes of most retroviruses occur in different reading frames and their translation as a single polypeptide is carried out by ribosomal frameshifting in the -1 direction. The alignment of the different reading frames occurs by overlapping reading in response to at least two signals within the RNA: one is a heptanucleotide stretch at the frameshift site and the other is a stem-loop structure which occurs just downstream of the first signal.
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