The Autographa californica multinucleocapsid nuclear polyhedrosis virus (AcMNPV), which is used for the overexpression of eukaryotic genes and is being engineered for possible use as a viral insecticide, has a circular, supercoiled genome of approximately 128 kilobases. Despite its widespread use, little is known about the mechanism by which AcMNPV replicates. Evidence is presented in this report that AcMNPV origins of DNA replication are repeated sequences each containing several closely related imperfect palindromes that are present in six regions distributed around the genome. Although AcMNPV infection-dependent plasmid replication was initiated by a single complete palindrome, the amount of replication was substantially increased in plasmids containing six or eight palindromes.

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A 6.4 kb region from the Lymantria dispar multicapsid nuclear polyhedrosis virus (LdMNPV) genome was sequenced and found to contain open reading frames (ORFs) homologous to the polyhedron envelope (PE) protein coding sequence, and the C-terminal half of ORF 1, which is a gene located upstream of the PE protein gene in other baculoviruses. The proteins predicted from the LdMNPV genes encoding the PE protein, and ORF 1 demonstrated 27 and 34% amino acid sequence identity, respectively, with the corresponding genes in the Autographa californica multicapsid nuclear polyhedrosis virus.