Complete Genome Sequence of HSV-1 Strain MacIntyre

Herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) strain MacIntyre has a severe defect in the anterograde spread after replication in the nucleus. It egresses and infects only neurons that are presynaptic to the infected neuron, which is contrast to wild-type HSV-1 that egresses and infects neurons both pre- and postsynaptic to the infected one. The existing partial genome sequence of MacIntyre in GenBank was assembled from Illumina short reads and leaves more than 5k base pairs of undetermined regions in the genome. To help us better understand the genetic determinants that lead to the uniqueness of the MacIntyre strain, we sequenced the genome with Pacbio SMRT® long read sequencing technology and resolved the complete sequence.