Neoplastic transformation of rat cells by herpes simplex virus type II DNA fragment BAM HI-E, which contains cell related sequences

Herpes simplex virus type II DNA subfragment Bam HI-E transforms immortalized rat cells to a complete tumorigenic phenotype. Southern blots showed that Bam HI-E hybridized to specific cellular DNA sequences, and that some of these sequences become amplified in Bam HI-E-transformed cell lines. The minimal transforming region of Bam HI-E (minimal mtr III) was determined to be a 486 basepair subfragment. In Southern blots, however, minimal mtr III hybridized to cellular dispersed repetitive sequences, of which none appeared amplified. Also, two extrachromosomal DNA molecules were rescued from Bam HI-E-transformed cell lines: FS-1 and FS-2. The FS-1 was determined to be a resident plasmid in the rat cell line (Rat-2) used in our experiments. The FS-2 was determined to contain 67% of the Bam HI-E originally used to transform the cells, and rat cellular DNA. The presence of rat cellular sequences and genetic map analysis of FS-2 suggests a recombination event occurs between HSV II DNA and rat cellular DNA.