Figure 1

Growth curves of HCMV recombinants with mutations in UL97. HFF cells were infected at an MOI of 0.01 PFU/cell and titers of the resulting progeny virus in cell lysates were determined at the indicated times. (A) Both a UL97-deleted virus (black triangles) and a null mutant with a K355M mutation (open circles) replicate poorly compared to the HB5 parent virus (black circles). (B) Replication kinetics of recombinant viruses with mutations in putative Rb-binding sites were determined and exhibit a slight delay in replication. Shown are the average titers from 2 replicate cultures with error bars representing the standard deviation values. RC295 (open circles) contains a mutation in the LxCxE motif, RC312 (black triangles) has a mutation in the LxCxD motif, RC316 (open triangles) carries a mutation in the IxCxE motif, and titers of the parent virus are shown as black circles. (C) RC323 (open circles) contains mutations in both the LxCxE and the LxCxD motifs and is shown with HB5 as a control (black circles). (D) Growth curves of SEAP-expressing HCMV recombinants with mutations in UL97 were examined separately; shown is the average SEAP activity of 5 replicates with the error bars representing the standard deviations. Replication of the wild-type virus with a SEAP-expression cassette (black circles) is similar to that of the recombinant virus with a deletion of codon 151 which disrupts the LxCxE motif (open circles), and both replicate much better than the virus with a truncation of the UL97 open reading frame (black triangles).