Altered cell cycle progression and aberrant mitosis in adenovirus-infected rodent cells.

Actively growing mouse or rat embryo cells suffered structural chromosome damage, mitotic anomalies, and polyploidy after infection by human adenovirus type 5. Chromosome damage required expression of one or more early viral genes and showed regular periodicity in its frequency. The growth cycle time of some of the infected cells was reduced by about 5 hours due to a decrease in G1, and the interval between successive waves of chromosome damage corresponded to this reduced cycle time. After infection there was a decrease in cells with G1 DNA content and an increase in cells with G2 diploid, aneuploid, and polyploid DNA contents. We suggest these effects are due to the expression in semipermissive cells fo early viral gene(s), whose function in productive infection in vivo is to alter cell cycle controls in order to maximize the number of cells able to replicate viral DNA and the time such cells spend in DNA replication.