The goal of this project is to understand the molecular and biological mechanisms that generate variation in retroviral populations.Variation in retroviral populations has become medically important because it generates drug- resistant human immuno-deficiency (HIV) variants, allows the virus to evade the host immune response, and may frustrate efforts to develop anti-retroviral vaccines. Mutations in retroviruses are also essential for activating the oncogenic potential of proto-oncogenes captured by retroviruses. A clinically relevant aim is to use the spleen necrosis virus (SNV)-based in vivo forward mutation assay to determine whether anti-retroviral drugs AZT, ddI and ddC increase the retroviral mutation rate and contribute to the generation of drug-resistant virus. A related aim is to select for drug-resistant SNV and determine whether the mutant reverse transcriptases have altered mutation rates. Virus producing cells or target cells will be exposed to the drugs to determine whether they are mutagenic during viral RNA transcription or reverse transcription. SNV vectors will be designed to distinguish spontaneous as well as drug- induced mutations during RNA- or DNA-dependent DNA synthesis stages of reverse transcription.
A second aim i s to further understand the process we named hypermutation, in which several mutations occur in each provirus during one round of retroviral replication. The frequency and types of hypermutation will be determined by using retroviral vectors designed to identify hypermutation. Our hypothesis that hypermutation results from polymerization by error-prone reverse transcriptases will be tested by utilizing a retroviral vector designed to identify and isolate genes encoding hypermutant reverse transcriptases.
A third aim i s to perform the forward mutation assay in an animal model system to determine the mutation rates in a single replication cycle, determine the replication rate for SNV in various stages of infection, and determine the relative replication rate for a wildtype and defective virus in co-infected animals to determine the evolutionary potential of retroviruses with transduced oncogenes.
