Infectious and noninfectious recombinant clones of the provirus of SNV differ in cellular DNA and are apparently the same in viral DNA.

Ten clones of Charon 4A containing proviruses of spleen necrosis virus, an avian retrovirus, and flanking chicken DNA sequences were isolated and characterized. Some clones gave rise to progeny with viral DNA sequences deleted or duplicated, probably as a result of crossing-over in the 600 bp terminal redundancy in viral DNA. The cellular sequences are different in each clone, indicating that all the proviruses are integrated in different sites in cellular DNA. Six clones are infectious and four are not. All the infectious molecules containing a provirus are of a similar size and are smaller than the noninfectious molecules containing a provirus. The viral DNA is not apparently different in eight clones, but two clones, one infectious and one noninfectious, lack two restriction sites each. Large changes in proviral DNA therefore do not seem responsible for the lack of infectivity of some clones. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that neighboring cellular DNA sequences control proviral expression (infectivity).