Hitchhiking without Covalent Integration

In eukaryotes, many latent viruses attach to mitotic chromosomes noncovalently for effective partitioning in dividing cells. For different viruses, the cis and trans elements encoded by the episomes have been effectively defined but the chromosomal “receptors” for such tethering have remained elusive. In this issue of Cell, You et al. (2004) give us a first insight into the cellular protein machinery important for animal papillomavirus retention.