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Journal of Virology, September 2007, p. 9870-9877, Vol. 81, No. 18
0022-538X/07/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JVI.00001-07
Copyright © 2007, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

The ORF49 Protein of Murine Gammaherpesvirus 68 Cooperates with RTA in Regulating Virus Replication

Division of Biotechnology, College of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, Korea University, Seoul 136-713,¹ Department of Microbiology, College of Medicine, Hallym University, Chuncheon 200-702, Republic of Korea,² Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095³

Received 2 January 2007/ Accepted 28 June 2007

Our functional mapping study of murine gammaherpesvirus 68 (MHV-68, or HV-68) revealed that a mutant harboring a transposon at the ORF49 locus (ORF49^null) evidenced a highly attenuated in vitro growth. ORF49 resides adjacent to and in an opposite direction from RTA, the primary switch of the gammaherpesvirus life cycle. A FLAG-tagged ORF49 protein was able to transcomplement ORF49^null, and a revertant of ORF49^null restored its attenuated growth to a level comparable to that of the wild type. The FLAG-tagged ORF49 protein promoted the ability of RTA to activate downstream target promoters and enhanced virus replication from the ORF50^null virus in the presence of RTA. Furthermore, ORF49 enhanced wild-type virus replication by increasing the RTA transcript levels. Our data indicate that ORF49 may perform an important function in MHV-68 replication in cooperation with RTA.

Published ahead of print on 18 July 2007.

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