Restriction enzyme digests of rapidly renaturing fragments of vaccinia virus DNA.

Vaccinia virus DNA fragments that have been denatured by alkali and then neutralized contain a fraction that rapidly reforms duplex structures. The fraction is enriched by fractionating on hydroxyapatite columns and serves as as substrate for digestion by two restriction endonucleases isolated from Hemophilus parainfluenzae, Hpa I and HPa II. The patterns obtained by gel electrophoresis of the digested fragments show the presence of three major bands after Hpa I digestion and four major bands after Hpa II digestion. The DNA that is isolated from some of these bands quickly reforms duplex regions after alkaline denaturation. The size of the DNA segments in the major bands has been estimated to be in the range of 0.44 X 10(6) to 3.2 X 10(6) daltons. The fragments which rapidly reform duplex chains after denaturation are sensitive to single-strand-specific nucleases. These results are consistent with a model of vaccinia virus DNA which has a covalent link connecting complementary chains.