Characterization f human telomeric repeat sequences from human herpesvirus 6 and relationship to replication

Here we examine by polymerase chain reaction amplifi-cation followed by cloning and sequence analyses selected regions of the human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6) genome which contain human telomeric repeats (TTA-GGG). We determine the relative number, arrangement and orientation f the repeats in the unit length genome, in concatemeric replicative intermediates and in het-erogeneous (het) regions. We also examine distribution of the repeats in the entire genome (159 kb) and their orientation relative to DNA packaging motifs and the origin of lytic replication. In the prototype orientation the HHV-6 repeat is the related complement, TAACCC. We show that tandem arrays of this repeat are present in the right and left long direct repeats (DR L and DR R, 8 kb each) which bound the long unique sequence (U L