TY - JOUR T1 - A Freeze Frame View of Vesicular Stomatitis Virus Transcription Defines a Minimal Length of RNA for 5′ Processing A1 - Tekes, Gergely A1 - Rahmeh, Amal A. A1 - Whelan, Sean P. J. Y1 - 2011/06/02 N2 - Author Summary Using a prototype of the nonsegmented negative strand RNA viruses, vesicular stomatitis virus, we probed the spatial relationship between the RNA dependent RNA polymerase and 5′ mRNA capping and methylation activities of the large polymerase protein. Because the 5′ mRNA processing reactions dramatically impact the nucleotide polymerization activity of the protein, they may function as a quality control step in viral transcription. We developed a means to stall transcription at precisely defined locations following initiation and analyzed the cap status of the stalled transcripts. We show that 30-nt transcripts are uncapped whereas those that are 31-nt long gain are capped and methylated at both guanine-N-7 and ribose-2′-O positions. Combined with our recent work that determined the molecular architecture of the VSV polymerase, this work reveals the spatial relationship within a functional polymerase complex of the polymerase domain and the 5′ mRNA processing domains of the L protein. JF - PLOS Pathogens JA - PLOS Pathogens VL - 7 IS - 6 UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1002073 SP - e1002073 EP - PB - Public Library of Science M3 - doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1002073 ER -