Primary human embryo lung fibroblasts and adult diploid fibroblasts infected by the human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) display -galactosidase (-Gal) activity at neutral pH (senescence-associated -Gal [SA--Gal] activity) and overexpression of the plasminogen activator inhibitor type 1 (PAI-1) gene, two widely recognized markers of the process designated premature cell senescence. This activity is higher when cells are serum starved for 48 h before infection, a process that speeds and facilitates HCMV infection but that is insufficient by itself to induce senescence. Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV), a member of the betaherpesvirus family, is widespread among humans, where it establishes a persistent infection that causes disease and mortality in immunocompromised individuals (44). HCMV remains the major viral cause of birth defects in humans, with an incidence of about 1% of live births. Among these congenital infections, the incidence of severe neurological complications is estimated to be at least 10%. Additionally, epidemiological data and pathological studies suggest a link between HCMV infection and atherosclerosis.Following infection of permissive cells, i.e., human embryo fibroblasts (HELF), HCMV gene expression occurs in three temporal phases, designated immediate-early (IE), early, and late (41). The most abundant IE transcripts arise from the major IE region in the unique long region of the genome: differential-splicing events give rise to the 72-kDa IE protein (IE1) and the 86-kDa IE gene product (IE2), plus other isomers that regulate genes that are expressed during the S phase of the cell cycle. Studies from many laboratories have shown that these proteins act as transcriptional regulators of both virus and host cellular genes, such as DNA polymerase ␣, dihydrofolate reductase, thymidylate synthase, and ribonucleotide reductase (for a review see references 18 and 41).Replication of HCMV, which encodes its own replication apparatus, appears to be favored in the absence of host cellular DNA synthesis (17). Fibroblasts experimentally infected in vitro by HCMV are halted in both the G 1 -S and G 2 -M compartments, depending on the cell cycle phase where infection occurs (5,15,28,35). This cell cycle control is mediated by several viral proteins, such as IE2 and UL69, using mechanisms that have been determined (9,24,30,43,60). HCMV demonstrates a rather unique cell cycle arrest, preceded by a virally mediated mitogenic response of infected cells, with the transient induction of c-fos, c-jun, and c-myc (3). It induces the expression of proliferation markers such as proliferating cellular nuclear antigen (PCNA) and topoisomerase II (15,26) and cellular enzymes involved in DNA synthesis (22,31,33,38), but cellular activation does not seem to lead to cell division (1, 30). However, elevated levels of both cyclin E and B and their associated kinase activities are induced following infection (4,40,47), suggesting that HCMV has evolved mechanisms that support viral DNA synthesis but disallow cellular DNA replication b...