The varicella-zoster virus ORFS/L (ORF0) gene is required for efficient viral replication and contains an element involved in DNA cleavage.

The genome of varicella-zoster virus (VZV), a human alphaherpesvirus, consists of two unique regions, unique long (U(L)) and unique short (U(S)), each of which is flanked by inverted repeats. During replication, four isomers of the viral DNA are generated which are distinguished by the relative orientations of U(L) and U(S). VZV virions predominantly package two isomeric forms of the genome that have a fixed orientation of U(L). An open reading frame (ORF) of unknown function, ORFS/L, also referred to as ORF0, is located at the extreme terminus of U(L), directly adjacent to the a-like sequences, which are known to be involved in cleavage and packaging of viral DNA. We demonstrate here that the ORFS/L protein localizes to the Golgi network in infected and transfected cells. Furthermore, we were able to demonstrate that deletion of the predicted ORFS/L gene is lethal, while retention of the N-terminal 28 amino acid residues resulted in viable yet replication-impaired virus. The growth defect was only partially attributable to the expression of the ORFS/L product, suggesting that the 5' region of ORFS/L contains a sequence element crucial for cleavage/packaging of viral DNA. Consequently, mutations introduced into the extreme 5' terminus of ORFS/L resulted in a defect in DNA cleavage, indicating that the region is indeed involved in the processing of viral DNA. Since the sequence element has no counterpart at the other end of U(L), we concluded that our results can provide an explanation for the almost exclusive orientation of the U(L) seen in packaged VZV DNA.