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Herpes Simplex Virus: Genome Size and Redundancy Studied by Renaturation Kinetics

Department of Microbiology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637

ABSTRACT

Herpes simplex virus subtype 1 deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) was sheared in a French press to uniform fragments, denatured by heating, then allowed to reassociate. The renaturation reaction followed second-order kinetics with a single rate constant indicating that at least 95% of the genome was unique and that repetitive sequences, if present, were not detectable by this technique. The kinetic complexity of the herpes simplex genome was determined by DNA renaturation kinetics to be (95 ± 1) x 10⁶ daltons. Since this value is in excellent agreement with the molecular weight of viral DNA [(99 ± 5) x 10⁶ daltons] obtained from velocity sedimentation studies, it is concluded that virions contain only one species of double-stranded DNA molecules 95 x 10⁶ to 99 x 10⁶ daltons in molecular weight.