Comparative properties of RNA and DNA templates for the DNA polymerase of Rous sarcoma virus

Several natural RNAs were compared with respect to their template activities for the DNA polymerase of Rous Sarcoma Virus during a 2-hr incubation period. 60-70S viral RNA was found to be a 5- to 10-fold better template than heat-dissociated Rous viral RNA, influenza virus RNA, tobacco mosaic virus RNA, or ribosomal RNA. Denatured salmon DNA is a little better, and poly(dAT) is 2-4 times better as a template for the enzyme than is 60-70S Rous viral RNA. The 60-70S RNAs of different strains of avian tumor viruses have very similar template activities for a given avian tumor virus DNA polymerase. Oligo(dT) or oligo(dC) were found to enhance the template activity of heat-dissociated Rous viral RNA 20- to 30-fold, and that of other natural RNAs tested one- to several-fold. DNA syntheses of 1-24% were obtained during a 2-hour incubation of the enzyme with the above RNA templates. The results suggest that the enzyme prefers partially doublestranded or hybrid regions of RNAs for optimal DNA synthesis, but certain regions of single-stranded RNA can also serve as templates.Poly(dAT) competes with viral RNA for purified DNA polymerase during DNA synthesis, as would be expected if RNA- and DNA-dependent DNA synthesis was performed by at least one common active site of the same enzyme.