Polyoma virus early-late switch: regulation of late RNA accumulation by DNA replication

Early in infection of permissive mouse cells, messages from the early region of the polyoma virus genome accumulate preferentially over those from the late region. After initiation of DNA replication, the balance between early and late gene expression is reversed in favor of the late products. In previous work from our laboratory, we showed that viral early proteins do not activate the polyoma late promoter in the absence of DNA replication. Here we show that activation of the late genes in replication-incompetent viral genomes can occur if actively replicating genomes are present in the same cell. A low level of DNA replication, however, is insufficient to induce the early-late switch. Furthermore, replication-competent genomes that fail to accumulate late RNA molecules are defective in the transactivation of replication-incompetent genomes. We suggest that titration of an unknown diffusible factor(s) after DNA replication relieves the block to late RNA accumulation seen in the early phase, with most of this titration being attributable to late-strand RNA molecules themselves.