NUCLEOTIDE-SEQUENCE AND TRANSCRIPTIONAL ANALYSIS OF A PORTION OF THE BOVINE HERPESVIRUS GENOME ENCODING GENES HOMOLOGOUS TO HSV-1 UL25, UL26 AND UL26.5

We determined the nucleotide sequence of a 3811 base pair (bp) region of the bovine herpesvirus type-1 (BHV-1) HindIII-A fragment covering m ap units 0.429-0.456. which contained the HSV-1 homologues of the UL25 , UL26 and UL26.5 genes. Sequence overlap was verified with previously published BHV-1 sequences, resulting in contiguous sequence spanning from UL24 to UL27 (encoding glycoprotein B). We found that the UL25 op en reading frame (ORF) overlapped that of UL24 by 16 nucleotides, an u nexpected feature based on previous herpesvirus sequences. We previous ly showed that the BHV-1 UL26 and UL26.5 genes encoded proteins that f unctioned in proteinase and scaffolding activity during capsid assembl y, similar to the homologues in herpes simplex virus type-1. Northern blotting was used to map the four major transcripts from this region. As expected from the ORF analysis, the BHV-1 UL25 transcript initiated within the UL24 ORF. The BHV-1 UL24, UL25, UL26 and UL26.5 transcript s all terminated at a common 3'-polyadenylation site and varied signif icantly in their relative abundance. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd.