Nucleotide sequence and transcriptional analysis of the HindIII P region of a temperature-sensitive mutant of Autographa californica nuclear polyhedrosis virus.

DNA sequence analysis of the HindIII P region of a temperature-sensitive mutant of Autographa californica nuclear polyhedrosis virus confirmed the specific amplification of 1.4 kb of viral DNA from this region of the genome. The sequenced region included an open reading frame, translated in a counterclockwise direction, which would potentially encode a 74K protein. The amplified DNA was contained within this open reading frame, resulting in in-frame amplifications of a domain within the protein. Transcription studies revealed the presence of a ladder of viral RNA species corresponding to a 2.5 kb transcript carrying tandem repeats of about 1.4 kb. This indicated that the duplicated DNA was transcribed in the same orientation as the p10 gene. We predict that transcripts synthesized from the opposite DNA strand also consist of a ladder of related mRNAs which would be translated to produce a family of p74 proteins with multiple internal domains.