Structural features of the ribonucleotide reductase of Aujeszky's disease virus

A gene construct of the Aujeszky's disease virus (ADV) genome was prepared and the DNA fragment encoding the ribonucleotide reductase was structurally characterized. We determined the entire DNA sequence of two adjacent open reading frames of the ribonucleotide reductase genes with the intergenic sequence of nine base pairs. From the sequence analysis we predict that Aujeszky's disease virus encodes a ribonucleotide reductase which comprises two polypeptides--large and small subunits, with sizes of 835 and 303 amino acids, respectively. Nucleotide and amino acid sequences of the large and small subunits of the Aujeszky's disease virus ribonucleotide reductase have been compared with that of other herpesviruses, and structural features of both proteins have been characterized.