Inhibition of a complete replication cycle of human cytomegalovirus in actinomycin pre-treated cells.

The study of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) in cultures of human embryo lung fibroblasts, pre-treated with actinomycin D, has shown that under these conditions the virus infection does not proceed beyond the 'early' events of the virus replication cycle. In the same experimental conditions the growth of poliovirus type I, vaccinia virus and herpes simplex type I virus, was completely unaffected. These results suggest that the complete HCMV replication cycle requires some cellular function(s) between early transcription of the input virus genome and virus DNA synthesis.