The essential human cytomegalovirus gene UL52 is required for cleavage-packaging of the viral genome.

ABSTRACT: Replication of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) produces large DNA concatemers of head-to-tail-linked viral genomes that upon packaging into capsids are cut into unit-length genomes. The mechanisms underlying cleavage-packaging and the subsequent steps prior to nuclear egress of DNA-filled capsids are incompletely understood. The hitherto uncharacterized product of the essential HCMV UL52 gene was proposed to participate in these processes. To investigate the function of pUL52, we constructed a DeltaUL52 mutant as well as a complementing cell line. We found that replication of viral DNA was not impaired in noncomplementing cells infected with the DeltaUL52 virus, but viral concatemers remained uncleaved. Since the subnuclear localization of the known cleavage-packaging proteins pUL56, pUL89, a

SUBMITTER: Borst EM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2258901 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature