Epstein-Barr virus genomes with properties of circular DNA molecules in carrier cells

A high-density fraction of high-molecular-weight DNA was isolated from the human lymphoid cell line Raji. This cell line contains 50 to 60 virus genome equivalents of Epstein-Barr virus DNA per cell, and the high-density DNA fraction was 10-fold enriched in such viral sequences. Sedimentation analysis on neutral glycerol gradients, followed by hybridization experiments with viral complementary RNA, showed that most of the intracellular viral DNA sequences in this material did not cosediment with the cellular DNA, but were recovered as two distinct species with sedimentation coefficients of 100 S and 65 S. These two forms sediment 1.70-1.75 and 1.10-1.12 times as fast as the linear Epstein-Barr virus DNA from virus particles, and thus have the hydrodynamic properties of a covalently closed circular form and a nicked (containing single-strand breaks) circular form of the virus genome. The 100S form also behaved as a covalently closed circular EBV DNA molecule on gradient centrifugation in CsC1/propidium diiodide, It would appear that latent Epstein-Barr virus DNA has the properties of a mammalian episome, and that both nonintegrated and integrated viral DNA sequences can be isolated from carrier cells.