MOLECULAR EPIDEMIOLOGY OF HERPES-SIMPLEX VIRUSES

For epidemiologic, and occasionally legal, reasons, it is sometimes necessary to know definitively which of the myriad strains of herpes simplex virus is responsible for a particular infection. A straightforward enzymatic method, using restriction endonucleases originally devised for viral DNA mapping, can unambiguously distinguish one strain from another even though the difference in their DNAs may be only a single base pair.