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Updated: May 29, 2026

Establishment of Epstein-Barr Virus Growth-transformed Lymphoblastoid Cell Lines
Published on: November 8, 2011
Defective infectious particles and rare packaged genomes produced by cells carrying terminal-repeat-negative
R Feederle1, C Shannon-Lowe, G Baldwin
1German Cancer Research Center, Department of Virus-Associated Tumours, Im Neuenheimer Feld 242, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany.
Abstract:
The Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) lytic program includes lytic viral DNA replication and the production of a viral particle into which the replicated viral DNA is packaged. The terminal repeats (TRs) located at the end of the linear viral DNA have been identified as the packaging signals. A TR-negative (TR(-)) mutant therefore provides an appropriate tool to analyze the relationships between EBV DNA packaging and virus production. Here, we show that supernatants from lytically induced 293 cells carrying TR mutant EBV genomes (293/TR(-)) contain large amounts of viral particles devoid of viral DNA which are nevertheless able to bind to EBV target cells. This shows that viral DNA packaging is not a prerequisite for virion formation and egress. Rather surprisingly, supernatants from lytically induced 293/TR(-) cells also contained rare infectious viruses carrying the viral mutant DNA. This observation indicates that the TRs are important but not absolutely essential for virus encapsidation.
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