Viral protein X reduces the incorporation of mutagenic noncanonical rNTPs during lentivirus reverse transcription in macrophages

Unlike activated CD4+ T cells, nondividing macrophages have an extremely small dNTP pool, which restricts HIV-1 reverse transcription. However, rNTPs are equally abundant in both of these cell types and reach much higher concentrations than dNTPs. The greater difference in concentration between dNTPs and rNTPs in macrophages results in frequent misincorporation of noncanonical rNTPs during HIV-1 reverse transcription. Here, we tested whether the...