GENOMIC ORGANIZATION OF THE CANINE HERPESVIRUS US REGION

Canine herpesvirus (CHV) is an alpha-herpesvirus of limited pathogenic ity in healthy adult dogs and infectivity of the virus appears to be l argely limited to cells of canine origin. CHV's low virulence and spec ies specificity make it an attractive candidate for a recombinant vacc ine vector to protect dogs against a variety of pathogens. As part of the analysis of the CHV genome, the authors determined the complete nu cleotide sequence of the CHV US region as well as portions of the flan king inverted repeats. Seven full open reading frames (ORFs) encoding proteins larger than 100 amino acids were identified within, or partia lly within the CHV US: cUS2, cUS3? cUS3, cUS6, cUS7, cUS8 and cUS9; wh ich ale homologs of the herpes simplex virus type-1 US2; protein kinas e; gG, gD, gI, gE; and US9 genes, respectively. An eighth ORF was iden tified in the inverted repeat region, cIR6, a homolog of the equine he rpesvirus type-1 IR6 gene. The authors identified and mapped most of t he major transcripts for the predicted CHV US ORFs by Northern analysi s, (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.