Reassessing the Organization of the UL42–UL43 Region of the Human Cytomegalovirus Strain AD169 Genome

A polymorphism in the UL42–UL43 region of the human cytomegalovirus genome has been characterized by nucleotide sequence analysis, revealing a 929-bp insertion following nt 54,612 relative to the published strain AD169-UK genome sequence (M. S. Cheeet al.,1990,Curr. Top. Microbiol. Immunol.154, 125–170). Although AD169-UK exhibited polymorphism in this genomic region, other CMV strains (Towne, Toledo, and AD169-ATCC) carried only the newly characterized longer form. The additional sequence altered the assignment of UL42 and UL43 open reading frames. UL42 decreased in size from 157 to 125 codons, retaining 76 of the previously reported carboxyl terminal codons, and UL43 increased in size from 187 to 423 codons, retaining 185 of the previously reported amino terminal codons. This additional sequence makes UL43 a more conserved betaherpesvirus US22 family member. Only AD169-UK exhibited restriction fragment length polymorphism in this region, suggesting that a deletion occurred during the propagation of this strain in cell culture. The additional sequence should be considered a bona fide part of the cytomegalovirus genome and the AD169 genome size should be corrected to 230,283 bp.