NUCLEOTIDE-SEQUENCE ANALYSIS OF A 30-KB REGION OF THE BOVINE HERPESVIRUS-1 GENOME WHICH EXHIBITS A COLINEAR GENE ARRANGEMENT WITH THE UL21 TO UL4 GENES OF HERPES-SIMPLEX VIRUS

We report the nucleotide sequence of the 19-kb HindIII fragment B of b ovine herpesvirus 1 (BHV-1) DNA and adjacent parts of the HindIII A an d L fragments, which together span a still completely uncharted 30-kb region located between the glycoprotein H gene and the right end of th e unique long segment The analysis revealed 17 complete open reading f rames (ORFs) and 2 ORFs that were interrupted by potential splice dono r and acceptor sites. All of these ORFs exhibited strong amino acid se quence homology to the gene products of other alphaherpesviruses. The BHV-1 ORFs were arranged colinearly with the prototype sequence of her pes simplex virus 1 in the range of the UL21 to UL4 genes. Colinearity was also observed with the genes of betaherpesviruses and gamma herpe sviruses, although not all ORFs exhibited clear sequence homology. The possible functions of the proteins encoded within the sequenced regio n are assessed and features found are discussed. Unexpected findings i nclude the following: high amino acid sequence conservation among alph aherpesviruses despite large differences in G + C content, ranging fro m 45% for varicella tester virus to 72% for BHV-1; high similarity wit h other UL20 proteins al the predicted structural level in spite of re latively low amino acid homology; and a 2-kb open reading frame overla pping UL19 in the opposite sense and exhibiting high amino acid simila rity to the same area of pseudorabies virus. (C) 1995 Academic Press, Inc.