We have examined the ultrastructural localization of African swine fever vi
rus DNA in thin-sections of infected cells by in situ hybridization and aut
oradiography. Virus-specific DNA sequences were found in the nucleus of inf
ected Vero cells at early times in the synthesis of the viral DNA, forming
dense foci localized in proximity to the nuclear membrane. At later times,
the viral DNA was found exclusively in the cytoplasm. Electron microscopic
autoradiography of African swine fever virus-infected macrophages showed th
at the nucleus is also a site of viral DNA replication at early times. Thes
e results provide further evidence of the existence of nuclear and cytoplas
mic stages in the synthesis of African swine fever virus DNA. On the other
hand, alkaline sucrose sedimentation analysis of the replicative intermedia
tes synthesized in the nucleus and cytoplasm of infected macrophages showed
that small DNA fragments (similar to 6-12S) were synthesized in the nucleu
s at an early time, whereas at later times, larger fragments of similar to
37-49S were labeled in the cytoplasm. Pulse-chase experiments demonstrated
that these fragments are precursors of the mature cross-linked viral DNA. T
he formation of dimeric concatemers, which are predominantly head-to-head l
inked, was observed by pulsed-field electrophoresis and restriction enzyme
analysis at intermediate and late times in the replication of African swine
fever virus DNA. Our findings suggest that the replication of African swin
e fever virus DNA proceeds by a de novo start mechanism with the synthesis
of small DNA fragments, which are then converted into larger size molecules
. Ligation or further elongation of these molecules would originate a two-u
nit concatemer with dimeric ends that could be resolved to generate the gen
omic DNA by site-specific nicking, rearrangement, and ligation as has been
proposed in the de novo start model of Baroudy at al. (B. M. Baroudy, S. Ve
nkatesam, and B. Moss, 1982, Cold Spring Harbor Symp. Quant. Biol. 47 723-7
29) for the replication of vaccinia virus DNA. (C) 1999 Academic Press.