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Epstein–Barr virus genome in infectious mononucleosis

Nature volume 263, pages 787–789 (1976)Cite this article

Abstract

THE seroepidemiological evidence1 linking the Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) causatively with infectious mononucleosis is compelling, but there are many questions concerning the precise nature of the relationship between virus and disease2 and the immunological responses that limit the disease3,4. For example, until recently it remained unproven that the transforming agent excreted from the throat during acute and convalescent infectious mononucleosis is EBV specific. Lymphocytes from the umbilical cord can be transformed into continuous cell lines by exposure to the virus excreted from the throat. New evidence presented here and data published recently show that such transformed lymphocytes contain EBV genetic material as well as a virus-specific nuclear protein5 even though such cells, unlike those isolated from the peripheral blood, do not shed virus. Another question, persistent and crucial, has been whether the EBV originally derived from Burkitt's lymphoma in Uganda and the EBV associated with infectious mononucleosis are identical. We show here that the viral DNA in human lymphocytic lines derived from infectious mononucleosis partially lacks homology to EBV DNA. Such differences imply that an extensively deleted, defective EBV genome is retained in lymphocyte lines established from infectious mononucleosis or that the cell lines harbour different strains of EBV with up to 35 % heterologous DNA sequences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cancer Research Centre, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 27514

    JOSEPH S. PAGANO & CHIEN-HUI HUANG

  2. Virology Laboratory, North Carolina Memorial Hospital, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 27514

    YUNG-TSEN HUANG

Authors
  1. JOSEPH S. PAGANO
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  2. CHIEN-HUI HUANG
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  3. YUNG-TSEN HUANG
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PAGANO, J., HUANG, CH. & HUANG, YT. Epstein–Barr virus genome in infectious mononucleosis. Nature 263, 787–789 (1976). https://doi.org/10.1038/263787a0

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