PCR ANALYSIS OF HUMAN TELOMERIC REPEATS PRESENT ON HHV-6A VIRAL STRAINS

Human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6) presents a perfect tandem array of human t elomeric repeats (TRS) at both identical direct repeats (DR). Several researchers have reported a different TRS copy number by sequence anal ysis of HHV-6 DR's cloned fragments so it has been hypothesized that n umber of TRS is unstable. By PCR we show that the TRS copy number of U 1102 HHV-6 variant A strains is stable during viral cultivation in cel l lines and each HHV-6 variant A strain, detected in pathologic specim ens, is characterized by a specific TRS copy number.