Minus-strand DNA is present within murine type C ecotropic retroviruses prior to infection

Viral minus-strand DNA has been identified within ecotropic murine retroviruses prior to infection. The abundance of minus-strand DNA is inversely proportional to the distance from the primer binding site, suggesting that viral DNA is synthesized by reverse transcriptase with the genomic RNA as template. These findings demonstrate that replication of the retroviral genome is not initiated by infection and may begin after activation of reverse transcriptase by gag-pol cleavage during virus assembly.