The Autographa californica baculovirus genome: evidence for multiple replication origins.

The Autographa californica multinucleocapsid nuclear polyhedrosis virus (AcMNPV), which is used for the overexpression of eukaryotic genes and is being engineered for possible use as a viral insecticide, has a circular, supercoiled genome of approximately 128 kilobases. Despite its widespread use, little is known about the mechanism by which AcMNPV replicates. Evidence is presented in this report that AcMNPV origins of DNA replication are repeated sequences each containing several closely related imperfect palindromes that are present in six regions distributed around the genome. Although AcMNPV infection-dependent plasmid replication was initiated by a single complete palindrome, the amount of replication was substantially increased in plasmids containing six or eight palindromes.