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Non-dividing macrophages maintain extremely low cellular deoxyribonucleotide triphosphate (dNTP) levels, but high ribonucleotide triphosphate (rNTP) concentrations. The disparate nucleotide pools kinetically forces Human Immunodeficiency Virus 1 (HIV-1) reverse transcriptase (RT) to incorporate non-canonical rNTPs during reverse transcription. HIV-1 RT pauses near ribonucleoside monophosphates (rNMPs) embedded in the template DNA, which has previously been shown to enhance mismatch extension. Here, pre-steady state kinetic analysis shows rNTP binding affinity (Kd) of HIV-1 RT for non-canonical rNTPs was 1.4- to 43-fold lower, and the rNTP rate of incorporation (kpol) was 15- to 1551-fold slower than for dNTPs. This suggests that RT is more selective for incorporation of dNTPs rather than rNTPs. HIV-1 RT selectivity for dNTP versus rNTP is the lowest for ATP, implying that HIV-1 RT preferentially incorporates ATP when dATP concentration is limited. We observed that incorporation of a dNTP occurring one nucleotide before an embedded rNMP in the template had a 29-fold greater Kd and a 20-fold slower kpol as compared to the same template containing dNMP. This reduced the overall dNTP incorporation efficiency of HIV-1 RT by 581-fold. Finally, the RT mutant Y115F displayed lower discrimination against rNTPs due to its increase in binding affinity for non-canonical rNTPs. Overall, these kinetic results demonstrate that HIV-1 RT utilizes both substrate binding and a conformational change during: (1) enzymatic discrimination of non-canonical rNTPs from dNTPs and (2) during dNTP primer extension with DNA templates containing embedded rNMP.