Stability of the nucleotide sequence of the phosphoprotein gene of measles virus during lytic infections.

Three clones with cDNA inserts encoding large portions of the measles virus phosphoprotein mRNA were characterized and compared with a previously published sequence of the Edmonston strain of measles virus. The two cloned viruses were separated by more than 100 passages. Only one out of 1477 nucleotides differed in the two sequences reflecting a very low mutation rate of the phosphoprotein gene during dilute lytic passages. The discovery that a third reading frame in the phosphoprotein gene may code for a novel peptide chain in addition to the P and C peptides may explain some of the high stability of the gene. The new reading frame was accessed by a translational shift caused by insertion of one extra G at a particular site in one of three otherwise identical cDNA sequences. A discrepancy was also found between the presumably high error rate of viral RNA polymerases and the stability of nucleotides in which mutations would not lead to amino acid substitutions. A few errors in the previously published sequence were discovered and the corrections are presented.