Inverted terminal repetition in vaccinia virus DNA encodes early mRNAs

Abstract
Vaccinia virus DNA contains a long inverted terminal repetition of MW .apprx. 6.8 .times. 106. A fragment of MW 6.3 .times. 106 from this repetition was cloned in coliphage .lambda. and used to isolate RNA from phage-infected [Escherichia coli] cells. EM indicates that early RNA are transcribed from the repeated sequence and cell-free translation shows that the RNA code for polypeptides.