Review

When is it time for reverse transcription to start and go?

Marylène Mougel¹ , Laurent Houzet² and Jean-Luc Darlix³

¹  Université Montpellier 1, Centre d'études d'agents Pathogènes et Biotechnologies pour la Santé (CPBS), CNRS, UMR 5236, CPBS, 4 Bd Henri IV, CS69033, 34965 Montpellier, France

²  Molecular Virology Section, Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892, USA

³  LaboRetro, Unité de virologie humaine INSERM U758, IFR128, ENS, 46 allée d'Italie, Lyon, France

author email corresponding author email

Retrovirology 2009, 6:24doi:10.1186/1742-4690-6-24

Published:	4 March 2009

Abstract

Upon cell infection by a retrovirus, the viral DNA polymerase, called reverse transcriptase (RT), copies the genomic RNA to generate the proviral DNA flanked by two long terminal repeats (LTR). A discovery twenty years ago demonstrated that the structural viral nucleocapsid protein (NC) encoded by Gag is an essential cofactor of reverse transcription, chaperoning RT during viral DNA synthesis. However, it is only recently that NC was found to exert a control on the timing of reverse transcription, in a spatio-temporal manner. This brief review summarizes findings on the timing of reverse transcription in wild type HIV-1 and in nucleopcapsid (NC) mutants where virions contain a large amount of newly made viral DNA. This brief review also proposes some explanations of how NC may control late reverse transcription during Gag assembly in virus producer cells.