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. 2011 Mar 10;39(12):5232–5244. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkr113

Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Insertion of uAUGs in the HIV-1 5′-UTR. (A) The full-length HIV-1 5′-UTR encompasses nt +1 to +335 of the HIV-1 genomic RNA and harbours several structure and sequence motifs that are essential for viral replication. The RNA structure model was published previously (24). The regulatory motifs are marked in colours and further explained in the text. An asterisk indicates the Gag start codon. Red flags indicate where uAUGs or UAGs are inserted. The insertions are indicated A1–A8 for the uAUG insertions. The uAUG insertions are shown in detail next to the RNA structure model; the flanking Kozak sequences are underlined. The nucleotide position of the 5′-UTR is indicated and red nucleotides indicate the insertions whereas the boxed nucleotide indicates a mutation. (B) The luciferase reporter construct is shown with the 5′-LTR promoter elements U3, R and U5; nt positions of transcription start site (+1) and the Gag coding sequences are shown. The reporter constructs encode a fusion protein of the Gag N-terminal 25 amino acids and the firefly luciferase protein. As a result of the cloning strategy, the original AUG start codon that marks the beginning of the luciferase open reading frame (AUGLuc) is in frame with the Gag start codon (AUGGag).