**2. EBV life cycle in brief**

During primary infection, EBV initially undergoes a brief replication in the epithelial cells of the oropharynx and salivary glands (Young & Rickinson 2004). The virus subsequently infects trafficking B-cells where the virus establishes a lifelong persistence and proceeds periodic spontaneous reactivation, resulting in lytic replication, infectious virus production and transmission (Cohen 2000). Upon reactivation, EBV can productively infect oropharyngeal epithelium, leading to infectious virus production and transmission (Jenkins, Binne & Farrell 2000). In latent infection, EBV genomic DNA exists as an episome, replicating only once during S phase and partitioning accurately into daughter cells during the mitotic phase. In lytic state, the EBV genomic DNA is linear. The initiation of lytic replication process greatly depends on the expression of two EBV immediate-early (IE)
