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. 1973 May;70(5):1574–1578. doi: 10.1073/pnas.70.5.1574

Virus-Like Particles in an Extranuclear Mutant of Neurospora crassa

Hans Küntzel 1, Zoltan Barath 1,*, Iqbal Ali 1, Jürgen Kind 1, Hans-Hinrich Althaus 1
PMCID: PMC433545  PMID: 4268098

Abstract

A particulate fraction not present in wild-type cells has been isolated from the cytoplasm and from lysed mitochondria of the respiratory-deficient extranuclear mutant “abnormal-1” of Neurospora crassa. The particles have a density between 1.13 and 1.2 g/ml. They appear in thin sections after OsO4 fixation as virus-like polymorphic vesicles containing an electron-dense nucleoid of 120-170 nm in diameter. The central core is surrounded by one or two “unit membrane” envelopes of 100 Å thickness. The particles contain a single-stranded 33S RNA that is converted to 7-9S RNA by heat treatment in the presence of sodium dodecyl sulfate and that differs in its base composition from mitochondrial and cytoplasmic ribosomal RNA. They contain 7% phospholipids rich in phosphatidylethanolamine and two major proteins, a lipoprotein of molecular weight 15,000 and a glycoprotein of molecular weight 95,000. It is suggested that these virus-like particles originate within mitochondria.

Keywords: mitochondria, RNA virus, lipoprotein, glycoprotein

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Selected References

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