Studies on the methylation of avian sarcoma proviruses in permissive and non-permissive cells

The extent of methylation of several avian oncogenic proviruses was determined by using the restriction endonucleases HpaII and MspI. The results indicated that the transformation-defective proviruses (RAV-O or B77-td), which are exogenously introduced into avian host cells, were not methylated. However, endogenous proviruses (RAV-O) or ASV proviruses present in non-permissive host cells were found to be partly or completely methylated. The methyl-sensitive restriction endonuclease PvuI, which recognizes a unique site within the long terminal repeat in the ASV genome, failed to cleave proviruses present in several non-permissive host cells. From these results we suggest that modification of the sequence around the PvuI site results in reduced levels of transcription.