Detection, purification, and characterization of two species of covalently closed circular proviral DNA molecules of bovine leukemia virus

Cocultivation of uninfected and bovine leukemia virus-producing bat cells yielded, in addition to the unintegrated linear DNA duplex, DNA molecules that migrated as 4.4- and 4.8-kilobase-pair DNA fragments in gel electrophoresis. These DNA molecules were purified by acid-phenol extraction and cleaved with restriction endonucleases EcoRI, and HindIII, which have one recognition site each on the bovine leukemia virus proviral DNA. Such cleavage generated DNA molecules of approximately 10.0 and 9.4 kilobase pairs, thus indicating the existence of two species of covalently closed circular molecules of bovine leukemia virus proviral DNA.