ScienceAsia 15 (1989): 157-169 |doi: 10.2306/scienceasia1513-1874.1989.15.157

DETECTION OF TYPE-COMMON AND TYPE-SPECIFIC HERPES SIMPLEX VIRUS DNA SEQUENCES USING RNA PROBES

WASUN CHANTRATITA^a, ERIK A. HENCHAL^b,c AND CHALOBON YOOSOOK^a

ABSTRACT: A nucleic acid hybridization assay to identify clinical isolates of herpes simplex virus (HSV) was developed using in vitro synthesized, radioactively labelled RNA transcripts from virus-specific DNA fragments cloned in transcription vector pGEM3. RNA probes derived from the HSV-1 BarnHI Q DNA fragment hybridized strongly with HSV-1 and HSV-2 DNA, while RNA derived from HSV-1, EcoRI I, HindIII - PvuII DNA fragment hybridized with HSV-1 DNA only. The results of HSV typing using both common and type-specific probes correlated well with monoclonal antibody typing and restriction endonuclease analysis. Neither probe bound to cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr virus, varicella zoster virus, or pseudorabies virus DNA.

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a) Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Bangkok 10400, Thailand.
b) Department of Virology, U.S.A. Medical Component, Armed Forces Research Institute of the Medical Sciences, APO San Francisco 96346-5000.
c) Current address: Department of Virus Diseases, WaIter Reed Army Institute of the Medical Sciences, WashingtOn, DC 20307-5100, U.S.A.

Received 11 February 1989