Nucleosome-like structural subunits of intranuclear parental adenovirus type 2 DNA.

The intranuclear structure of parental adenovirus 2 DNA was studied using digestion with micrococcal nuclease as a probe. When cultures were infected with 32P-labeled virions, at a multiplicity of 3,000 particles per cell, 14 to 21% of parental DNA penetrated the cell and reached the nucleus. Of this parental DNA, 60% could be solubilized by extensive digestion with micrococcal nuclease. The nuclease-resistant fraction contained viral deoxyribonucleoprotein monomers and oligomers. These nucleosome-like structures contained DNA fragments which are integral multiples of a unit-length DNA of approximately 185 base pairs. The monomeric DNA is similar in length to the unit-length DNA contained in cellular nucleosomes. However, the viral oligomers are slightly smaller than their cellular counterparts. DNA-DNA hybridization demonstrated that all segments of the viral genome, including those expressed as mRNA only at late times, are represented in the nucleosomal viral DNA. The amount of early intranuclear viral chromatin was proportional to multiplicity of infection up to multiplicities of 4,000 particles per cell. However, viral transcriptional activity did not increase in direct proportion to the amount of viral chromatin. Maximum accumulation of intranuclear viral chromatin was achieved by 3 h after infection. The intranuclear parental viral chromatin remained resistant to nuclease digestion even at late times in infection, after viral DNA replication had begun.