Interactions of polyoma and mouse DNA's. II. Polyoma-induced mouse DNA replication and pseudovirion formation.

Secondary mouse embryo (ME) cultures which had been grown prior to infection in the presence of 5-bromodeoxyuridine (BUdR) and 5-fluorodeoxy-uridine were found to be permissive for polyoma virus (16). The DNA extracted from the progeny virus yielded two bands on CsCl isopycnic centrifugation. The light band (LL) contained supercoiled circular (polyoma DNA I), open circular (polyoma DNA II), and linear (polyoma DNA III) molecules, as was seen by electron microscopy. The hybrid band (HL) contained exclusively linear molecules. This DNA was pure, density - labeled, pseudovirion DNA, i.e., fragmented HL mouse DNA. The quantitative comparison of HL and LL polyoma DNA III from six different virus preparations always revealed an excess of HL DNA, the ratio of HL/LL being between 1.2 and 2.2. These results led to the conclusion that in BUdR-prelabeled, polyoma-infected ME cells pseudovirion DNA is excised both from unreplicated and newly replicated regions of mouse DNA.