POLQ and Epstein-Barr virus infection: Indeed, whilst we confirmed the observation of Nikitin et al who identified 20 DDR genes that were transcriptionally up-regulated following EBV infection [52], we also found that only one of these genes (POLQ) was expressed in CD40L/IL-4 blasts at a significantly lower level (2.7-fold; p = 0.009) than in EBV blasts.