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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 May 1.
Published in final edited form as: Future Virol. 2012 Jul;7(7):679–686. doi: 10.2217/FVL.12.56

Figure 2. In vitro catalytic activities of HIV integrase.

Figure 2

(A) Integrase catalyzes 3′ end processing on an oligonucleotide DNA substrate mimicking the ends of HIV DNA. The GT dinucleotide is released, exposing the conserved CA that is to be joined to the target DNA. (B) Integrase also catalyzes DNA strand transfer, in which the 3′ end of the viral DNA attacks a phosphodiester bond in the target DNA, covalently joining the viral to target DNA. Integration can occur at essentially any location in the target DNA. Note that, in vitro with oligonucleotide DNA substrates, most of the reaction products result from joining only one viral DNA end into one strand of target DNA, rather than concerted integration of a pair of viral DNA ends as occurs in vivo.