Evidence for an involvement of thymidine kinase in the excision repair of ultraviolet-irradiated herpes simplex virus in human cells.

A wild-type strain of herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1:KOS) encoding a functional thymidine kinase (tk+) and a tk- mutant strain (HSV-1:PTK3B) were used to study the role of the viral tk in the repair of UV-irradiated HSV-1 in human cells. UV survival of HSV-1:PTK3B was substantially reduced compared with that of HSV-1:KOS when infecting normal human cells. In contrast, the UV survival of HSV-1:PTK3B was similar to that of HSV-1:KOS when infecting excision repair-deficient cells from a xeroderma pigmentosum patient from complementation group A. These results suggest that the repair of UV-irradiated HSV-1 in human cells depends, in part at least, on expression of the viral tk and that the repair process influenced by tk activity is excision repair or a process dependent on excision repair.