Sequence conservation and differential expression of Marek's disease virus microRNAs.

Marek's disease virus (MDV), a herpesvirus that causes a lymphoproliferative disorder in chickens, encodes a number of microRNAs derived primarily from two locations in the MDV genome. One cluster of microRNA genes flanks the meq oncogene, and a second cluster is found within the latency-associated transcript (LAT) region. The sequences of MDV microRNAs from a collection of field and reference strains with various levels of virulence were compared and found to be highly conserved.