Incorporation of Mouse APOBEC3 into Murine Leukemia Virus Virions Decreases the Activity and Fidelity of Reverse Transcriptase

APOBEC3 proteins are restriction factors that induce G -> A hypermutation in retroviruses during replication as a result of cytidine deamination of minus-strand DNA transcripts. However, the mechanism of APOBEC inhibition of murine leukemia viruses (MuLVs) does not appear to be G -> A hypermutation and is unclear. In this report, the incorporation of mA3 in virions resulted in a loss in virion reverse transcriptase (RT) activity and RT fidelity that correlated with the loss of virion-specific infectivity.