5′ leader region of HIV-2 ROD genomic RNA. (A) The landmark sequences with known functions are indicated by boxes with the name indicated above. TAR, polyA signal, PBS, Ψ, SL1, SD, and gag represent the trans-activation region, the poly(A) signal domain, the primer binding site, the encapsidation signal, the stem–loop 1, the major splice donor site, and the 5′ end of the Gag protein coding region, respectively. (B) RNAs used in this study. The closed boxes represent the in vivo characterized encapsidation signal Ψ (Griffin et al. 2001) and the in vitro characterized dimerization element SL1 (in HIV-2; Dirac et al. 2001; Lanchy and Lodmell 2002). The open boxes represent the cores of the two dimer-interfering elements previously characterized 189–196 and 543–550 (Lanchy et al. 2003). The name of each RNA construct is indicated at the right. The short thick lines below some elements represent the binding sites of antisense DNA oligonucleotides used in this study.
