FIG. 1.

Effect of the deletion of the RNA1 5′ and/or 3′ UTR on RNA1 replication. (A) Schematic representation of recombinant baculoviruses for the synthesis of RNA1 and RNA1 UTR deletion mutants. AcR1δ, a previously described construct (13), carries the complete cDNA sequence of RNA1, while other constructs carry deletions in the 5′ and/or 3′ UTRs. The first and last nucleotides of FHV RNA1, as well as the positions of start (AUG) and stop (UGA) codons of the FHV replicase ORF, in AcR1δ are indicated. (B) Electrophoretic analysis on a denaturing agarose gel of total cellular RNA (3 μg) isolated from Sf21 cells infected with the indicated baculoviruses at an MOI of 5. RNA isolated from authentic FHV particles (vRNA) and gel-purified RNA3 were run for comparison in lanes 6 and 7, respectively. Note that RNA1 is barely visible in the reproduction in lane 3. The molecular sizes of RNA markers (in nucleotides) are indicated to the left.