Genetic recombination in Rous sarcoma virus: the genesis of recombinants and lack of evidence for linkage between pol, env and src genes in three factor crosses.

Three factor crosses were performed between Rouse sarcoma virus mutants with temperature-sensitive markers in the pol and src genes and host range markers in the env gene. A number of recombinant viruses appeared to segregate from virus particles which were heterozygous for all three genes under study. The frequency of various recombinant genotypes in the progeny was consistent with there being no greater linkage between the neighbouring gene pairs of pol and env and env and src than between the more distant pol and src. The significance of these results to proposed mechanisms of avian retrovirus recombination is discussed.