Incorporation of lipids into variants of Moloney sarcoma virus which produce gag-mos fusion proteins.

Several transforming gene products of mammalian retroviruses undergo post-translational addition of fatty acids. This report demonstrates that gag-mos fusion proteins from variant strains of murine sarcoma viruses incorporate both myristate and palmitate. However, the inefficiency of palmitate incorporation, as well as incorporation of that fatty acid into gag proteins, suggest that palmitate is metabolized to myristate before becoming bound to virus proteins. Furthermore, no detectable post-translational processing event is apparently required for addition of myristate, suggesting that such an event is unnecessary for association of gag-mos proteins with cell membranes.