Is Retroviral Recombination Mutagenic?
The first strand transfer reaction and retroviral recombination—especially forced copy choice recombination—are mechanistically related. Various researchers have suggested that strand transfer is an error-prone process (Peliska and Benkovic 1992, 1994; Darlix et al. 1993; Patel and Preston 1994) or that it is an important mechanism in the generation of retroviral genetic diversity (Temin 1993). It has been suggested that the ability of RT to perform strand transfers, which is a requirement for viral replication, predisposes the enzyme to generate errors (Coffin 1979; Temin 1993). In reconstituted reactions in vitro, RT can incorporate additional nontemplated nucleotides when it reaches the end of a template (Peliska and Benkovic 1992; Patel and Preston 1994). RTs are known to extend mismatches more readily than other DNA polymerases (Perrino et al. 1989; Bakhanashvili and Hizi 1992; Yu and Goodman 1992). It has been suggested that forced copy-choice-type recombination might be mutageni
