Promoter, spliced leader, and coding sequence for BICP4, the largest of the immediate-early proteins of bovine herpesvirus 1.

We report the complete nucleotide sequence of the bovine herpesvirus 1 (BHV-1) immediate-early gene encoding BICP4, the homolog of the ICP4 protein of herpes simplex virus. Combined with previous mapping studies, the sequence analysis revealed that the transcript for BICP4 consisted of a noncoding leader RNA (exon 1; 0.35 kb) separated by an intron (0.46 kb) from the main body (exon 2; 4.1 kb). The open reading frame for BICP4 (1343 amino acid residues) started 27 nt after the splice site and extended across exon 2 for most of its length, BICP4 contained two domains of high homology (regions 2 and 4), which had been recognized earlier to be most conserved in the ICP4 homologs of alpha-herpesviruses and to be functionally important. These domains were flanked by three regions of lower but still discernible homology. Unique features of BICP4 were two large clusters of glutamic acid residues near the end of region 3, and the displacement of a polyserine tract to region 5, which in all other ICP4 homologs residues near the end of region 1. Transient expression assays showed that BICP4 repressed its own promoter and activated other herpes-virus genes. The 8.1-kb sequence summarized here completes analysis of the inverted repeats of the BHV-1 genome; it includes a segment (2.5 kb) upstream of the BICP4 gene apparently devoid of coding sequences but containing numerous scattered transcription signals.