Varicella-zoster virus (VZV) is an alphaherpesvirus that causes two diseases, chickenpox and zoster. VZVopen reading frame 4 (ORF4) encodes the immediate-early 4 (IE4) protein, which is conserved among alphaherpesvirus and has transactivation activity in transient transfections. To determine whether the ORF4 gene product is essential for viral replication, we used VZV cosmids to remove ORF4 from the VZV genome. Deleting ORF4 was incompatible with recovery of infectious virus, whereas transfections done by using repaired cosmids with ORF4 inserted at a nonnative site yielded virus. To analyze the functional domain of IE4, we introduced a mutation altering the C-terminal amino acids, KYFKC (K443S), which was designed to disrupt the dimerization of IE4 protein. Transfections with these mutant cosmids yielded no virus, indicating that this KYFKC motif was essential for IE4 function.Varicella zoster virus (VZV) is a ubiquitous human alphaherpesvirus which causes varicella (chickenpox) during primary infection and herpes zoster (shingles) after its reactivation from sites of latency in sensory ganglia (1, 3). Both varicella and zoster continue to be serious public health problems (1, 11). The expression of VZV genes is regulated in a temporal fashion known as the lytic cascade. The product of open reading frame 4 (ORF4) has been shown to have immediate-early regulatory functions, like immediate-early 62 (IE62) and IE63 (4). The IE4 tegument protein is a 51-kDa phosphoprotein that transactivates genes of all three kinetic classes in transient expression systems and enhances IE62 transactivation (4). In turn, IE62, along with the cellular transcription factor USF, activates the ORF4 promoter (7). IE4 protein resembles its herpes simplex virus (HSV) homolog, ICP27, in its C-terminal residues (38% in amino acids 235 to 449) and complements ICP27 functions in this region, but it does not repair full deletions of the ICP27 gene (8, 9). The equine herpesvirus homolog is UL3 (12). Baudoux et al. have recently mapped IE4 domains in transient expression systems (2), demonstrating that the IE4 transactivating function depends on dimerization mediated by a KYFKC peptide in the C-terminal cysteine-rich region, amino acids 443 to 447. Other mutations in an arginine-rich region of the amino terminus, designated Rb, also reduced transactivation independently of dimerization and may be required for IE4 interactions with cellular proteins, including TATA-binding protein, transcription factor IIB, and the p50 and p65 subunits of NF-B (5). IE4 also has KH-like motifs that are involved in RNA binding which are found in conserved forms in alphaherpesvirus homologs and are required for HSV replication (13).The aim of this report was to examine the role of IE4 protein in viral replication by deleting or mutating ORF4 in the context of the viral genome. We showed that ORF4 is an essential gene and that the sequence encoding the C-terminal KYFKC motif in IE4 protein, which mediates dimerization, is required for VZV replication. Effect of ORF4 ...