Edited by
Janos Minarovits
Eva Gonczol
Tibor Valyi-Nagy

2007

Latency is a most remarkable property of herpesviruses that ensures the maintenance of their genetic information in their hosts for an extended period in the absence of productive replication. Members of all three herpesvirus subfamilies infecting a wide variety of target cells are able to establish latent infection, which is associated with a restricted expression of the viral genome.