Abstract
A juvenile rhesus monkey that was inoculated intravenously with molecularly cloned SIVmac239 became persistently infected. A modified polymerase chain reaction (PCR) procedure was used to specifically amplify full‐length envelope (env) gene sequences from DNA extracted from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC), lymph node tissue, and cells infected with recovered virus at 69 and 93 weeks post‐infection. Extensive sequence variability accumulated in vivo in spite of infection with molecularly cloned virus. In the central portion of env, sequence variability was largely confined to three discrete regions.
