Origin and destiny of adenovirus proteins

Lytic infection of human cells by adenovirus proceeds by a temporal expression of genes. Classically two phases have been defined: an early phase, which includes events occurring before the onset of DNA synthesis (8 hours), and a late phase, including events whose existence depends on the onset of DNA synthesis. During the late phase of infection, host cell macromolecular synthesis is progressively inhibited so that eventuallly only virus-specfic macromolecules are synthesized.