Characterization of the discontinuities in rice tungro bacilliform virus DNA

The dsDNA of rice tungro bacilliform virus (RTBV) has two discontinuities, one on each strand, each in a specific position as found in other pararetroviruses. The 5' end of discontinuity 1 was mapped to nucleotide 1 of the published RTBV DNA sequence which suggests that tRNAiMet serves as a primer for negative strand DNA synthesis. This 5' terminus contains up to two ribonucleotides and the 3' terminus overlaps it by five to 25 nucleotides. The discontinuity 2 (D2) did not map to a purine-rich region as has been found in other similar viruses. Both the 5' and 3' termini of D2 were heterogeneous in position giving structures varying from a gap of 10 nucleotides to an overlap of 103 nucleotides.