Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) DNA loads in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), plasma, and saliva, as well as infectivity of the virus in saliva, were evaluated in 20 patients for 6 months after the onset of infectious mononucleosis (IM). All patients displayed sustained high EBV DNA loads in the saliva, associated with a persistent infectivity of saliva at day 180. EBV DNA load in PBMCs decreased significantly from day 0 to day 180 (in spite of a viral rebound between day 30 and day 90 in 90% of the patients), and EBV DNA rapidly disappeared from plasma. These data show that patients with IM remain highly infectious during convalescence.
Deoxyuridine 5'-triphosphate pyrophosphatases (dUTPases) are ubiquitous enzymes cleaving dUTP into dUMP and pyrophosphate. They occur as monomeric, dimeric, or trimeric molecules. The trimeric and monomeric enzymes both contain the same five characteristic sequence motifs but in a different order, whereas the dimeric enzymes are not homologous. Monomeric dUTPases only occur in herpesviruses, such as Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). Here, we describe the crystal structures of EBV dUTPase in complex with the product dUMP and a substrate analog alpha,beta-imino-dUTP. The molecule consists of three domains forming one active site that has a structure extremely similar to one of the three active sites of trimeric dUTPases. The three domains functionally correspond to the subunits of the trimeric form. Domains I and II have the dUTPase fold, but they differ considerably in the regions that are not involved in the formation of the unique active site, whereas domain III has only little secondary structure.
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