ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on transfer ribonucleic acid (tRNA) involvement in the life cycle of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) virus, human immunodeficiency virus, type 1. Peyton Rous was the first to identify a filterable agent that caused tumors in chickens, and it is now known that this agent, Rous sarcoma virus is a retrovirus, converting its ribonucleic acid (RNA) genome to deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) during its life cycle. Work with RNA tumor viruses in the 1960s identified 70S RNA as the major nucleic acid entity in virions; subsequent work demonstrated that this species is a dimer of the 35S genomic RNA. The idea of tRNA specificity imparted by posttranscriptional modification is well known, for example, from the work on the translational specificity of tRNA. The chapter focuses on the roles of host tRNA molecules in the replication cycle of the retroviral genome.
