11th International AIDS Conference Vancouver, British Columbia — July 7-12, 1996

Int Conf AIDS 1996 Jul 7-12; 11:215 (abstract no. Th.A.270)
Guo HG, Colombini S, Raffeld M, Hayward G, Nicholas J, Gallo RC, Jiang YW, Reitz MS; Institute of Human Virology, MBC, UMBI, Baltimore, MD. Fax: 410-706-8184.

OBJECTIVE: Human herpesvirus 8 (HHV8) is a virus whose existence has been inferred by analyses of DNA fragments obtained by subtractive hybridization techniques from DNA of Kapposi's sarcoma (KS) lesions. Although it is present in some normal tissue, it is highly prevalent in KS tissue, and may play an etiologic role in KS. The available sequence data are limited to two short segments, representing parts of three open reading frames and suggest that HHV8 is most closely related to herpesvirus saimrii (HVS), a gamma herpesvirus which is not pathogenic in the squirrel monkey, its natural host, but causes fatal T cell lymphomas in owl monkeys, a heterologous host, and is also related to Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), the etiologic agent of Burkitt's lymphoma and infectious mononucleosis. We wished to characterize more of the viral genome to determine whether its relationship with HVS extends over the entire genome, and to characterize some of other HHV8 genes.

METHODS: Standard cloning techniques were used to make a partial Sau3A digestion library in lambda EMBL3. Standard DNA sequencing techniques were used to analyze the clones.

RESULTS: Partial sequence data was obtained for analogs of HVS ORFs 19, 25, 26, 30, 74 and 75. The sequences were most related to both HVS and equine herpesvirus 2 (EHV2), and less related to EBV.

CONCLUSIONS: HHV8 is most closely related to HVS and EHV2 of the gamma herpesviruses. The genes appear to be co-linear with those of HVS. It is likely that the biology of HHV8 will most closely resemble HVS and EHV2.

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ThA270

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