Resolution and characterization of intracytoplasmic forms of reverse transcriptase from Rauscher leukemia virus-producing cells.

The microsomal supernatant fraction obtained from a murine cell line chronically infected with and producing Rauscher leukemia virus (JLSV-10) was found to contain two forms of RNA-directed DNA polymerase (reverse transcriptase). The two enzyme forms, neither of which is detectable in uninfected cells (JLSV-9), were initially partially purified by poly(C)-agarose chromatography, and their separation was achieved by phosphocellulose chromatography. The enzyme form eluting first from phosphocellulose (0.3 M KCl), designated PC I, was found to be identical in all parameters tested to that form isolated directly from purified virions. The second enzyme peak, designated PC II, eluted from phosphocellulose at 0.5 M KCl and was not detectable in purified virions. The PC II enzyme has a molecular weight, determined by velocity sedimentation, of approximately 109,000, as compared with 70,000 for the PC I enzyme, and could not be further dissociated by exposure to high salt or nonionic detergent. Mixing purified virion or PC I DNA polymerase with uninfected cells followed by fractionation did not produce the PC II form, suggesting that it is neither an artifact of purification nor the result of fortuitous complexing of reverse transcriptase with normal cellular component(s). Both PC I and PC II enzyme forms appeared antigenically similar to virion DNA polymerase, demonstrated identical divalent cation requirements for various template-primers, and were capable of copying heteropolymeric regions of rabbit globin mRNA. However, kinetic studies of heat inactivation revealed that the PC II enzyme was far more heat labile than the PC I form, which appeared identical to the virion enzyme in this respect. Furthermore, whereas the PC I and virion-derived reverse transcriptase copied poly(C).(dG)12-18 most efficiently at a template-to-primer molar nucleotide ratio of 25:1, the PC II enzyme preferred a ratio of 5:1 for optimal rates of poly(dG) synthesis. Therefore, by these criteria, there appear to exist two intracellular forms of reverse transcriptase in the JLSV-10 Rauscher leukemia virus-producing murine cell line.