Instability of frog virus 3 mRNA in productively infected cells

Cloned DNA restriction fragments encoding representative frog virus 3 messages were used as probes to assess the stability of viral transcripts in infected fathead minnow cells. Analysis of Northern blot hybridization profiles confirmed earlier findings and revealed that in infected cells the steady-state level of representative frog virus 3 (FV3) messages increased throughout the replication cycle. However, when actinomycin D was added at 4 hr after infection to block the synthesis of new transcripts, viral messages were observed to turn over rapidly, with half-lives of approximately 2 hr. These results indicate that viral transcripts were not preferentially stabilized in FV3-infected cells and suggest that the high steady-state level of viral messages present at late times after infection was due to viral transcription outpacing message degradation. Moreover, the instability of viral messages challenges the suggestion that the terminal dyad symmetry (hairpin structure) observed in all frog virus 3 messages sequenced to date plays a role in transcript stability.