Fig. 7.

(See next page.) Nucleotide sequence variation among in vivo-derived HTLV-I tax clones. The whole Tax open reading frame (ORF) amplified from a sample DNA was ligated into pCG, and randomly selected plasmid clones were sequenced. Nucleotide sequences of 19, 39, and 38 tax clones derived from a cloned HTLV-I, pMT2 (a), and two HTLV-I-infected individuals, I.T. (b) and N.M. (c), respectively, are aligned in comparison with the reference ATK1 [20]. Dots indicate sequences identical to the reference. Italicized letters indicate non-synonymous substitutions, and those resulting in the translational terminal codon, in particular, are underlined. The dominant sequences in each sample are indicated as consensus sequences (CONS.). The number of clones identical to a given nucleotide sequence (FREQ) is shown on the right.