Mature form of the deoxyribonucleic acid from chick embryo lethal orphan virus

The deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) of chick embryo lethal orphan (CELO) virus, an oncogenic avian adenovirus, had a biphasic denaturation profile indicating intramolecular base composition heterogeneity. This was confirmed by shearing the DNA and centrifuging it to equilibrium in Cs(2)SO(4) in the presence of HgCl(2) when two bands were formed. No circular molecules formed when CELO virus DNA was annealed, although lambda DNA formed circles under the same conditions. No circular molecules were found by sedimentation or electron microscopy when the DNA was digested with exonuclease III and then annealed, but 30 to 40% of T7 DNA molecules became circular under similar conditions. The complementary strands of CELO virus DNA both appeared to be continuous, and, when CELO DNA was denatured and then annealed under appropriate conditions, all of the renatured molecules were linear. It is concluded that CELO virus DNA consists of a unique rather than permuted collection of linear molecules that lack exposed single-strand complementary ends or duplex terminal repetitions. These results are discussed in relation to the replication of viral DNA and the transformation of host cells.