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J. Virol., Jun 1996, 3423-3431, Vol 70, No. 6
R Pfuller and W Hammerschmidt
During the lytic phase of herpesviruses, intermediates of viral DNA
replication are found as large concatemeric molecules in the infected
cells. It is not known, however, what the early events in viral DNA
replication that yield these concatemers are. In an attempt to identify
these early steps of DNA replication, replicative intermediates derived
from the lytic origin of Epstein-Barr virus, oriLyt, were analyzed. As
shown by density shift experiments with bromodeoxyuridine, oriLyt
replicated semiconservatively soon after induction of the lytic cycle and
oriLyt-containing DNA is amplified to yield monomeric plasmid progeny DNA
(besides multimeric forms and high-molecular-weight DNA). A new class of
plasmid progeny DNA which have far fewer negative supercoils than do
plasmids extracted from uninduced cells is present only in cells undergoing
the lytic cycle of Epstein-Barr virus. This finding is consistent with
plasmid DNAs having fewer nucleosomes before extraction. The newly
replicated plasmid DNAs are dependent on a functional oriLyt in cis and
support an efficient marker transfer into Escherichia coli as monomeric
plasmids. Multimeric forms of presumably circular progeny DNA of oriLyt, as
well as detected recombination events, indicate that oriLyt-mediated DNA
replication is biphasic: an early theta-like mode is followed by a complex
pattern which could result from rolling-circle DNA replication.
Copyright © 1996, American Society for Microbiology
Plasmid-like replicative intermediates of the Epstein-Barr virus lytic origin of DNA replication
Institut fur Klinische Molekularbiologie and Tumorgenetik, GSF- Forschungzentrum fur Umwelt und Gesundheit GmbH, Munich, Germany.
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