Ground squirrel hepatitis virus DNA: molecular cloning and comparison with hepatitis B virus DNA.

Ground squirrel hepatitis virus (GSHV) shares many ultrastructural antigenic, molecular, and biological features with hepatitis B virus (HBV) of humans, indicating that they are members of the same virus group. Both viruses contain small circular DNA molecules which are partially single stranded. Here, we ligated an endonuclease EcoRI digest of GSHV DNA with EcoRI-cleaved plasmid vector pBR322 and cloned recombinant plasmids in Escherichia coli C600. Two cloned recombinants were characterized. One (pGS2) was found to contain only part of the GSHV genome, and the other (pGS11) was found to contain the entire viral DNA. A restriction endonuclease cleavage map of the GSHV insert in pGS11 and the locations of certain physical features of the virion DNA were determined. The relative positions of the single-stranded region, the unique 5' end of the short DNA strand, and the unique nick in the long DNA strand in GSHV DNA were found to be the same as those previously described for HBV DNA. Hybridization with an HBV [32P]DNA probe containing the apparent coding sequence for the major polypeptide of HBV surface antigen and a probe containing the putative coding sequence for the major polypeptide of the HBV core revealed specific homology with different restriction fragments of GSHV DNA. The two homologous regions had approximately the same locations relative to the single-stranded region, the 5' end of the short strand, and the nick in the long strand in the two viral DNAs. These results suggest that in both viruses the genes for the major HBV surface antigen and core polypeptides have the same locations relative to unique physical features of the viral DNAs.