Selected aspects of herpesvirus dna replication, cleavage/packaging and the development and use of viral amplicon vectors

This review deals with selected aspects of viral DNA replication and the cleavage/packaging of resultant replicated genomes, concentrating on the cis acting signals “ori” and “pac”. We also discuss the construction of amplicon vectors and their potential utilization for gene therapy. The studies relate to wild type (w.t.) virus, defective genomes, engineered amplicons and viral genomes cloned into Bacterial Artificial Chromosomes (BACs). We compare replication aspects of Herpes Simplex Virus-1 (HSV-1), to those of the Human Hepesviruses 6A, 6B and 7 members of the alpha and betaherpesvirinae subfamilies, respectively. Due to shortage of space only exemplary pioneering studies, will be discussed, followed by exemplary recent articles, upto 2009, which is the time this article was submitted for publication. We extend apology to authors not quoted in this short review.