Hepatitis B virus DNA made fully double stranded by a virion DNA polymerase reaction could be converted from circular to linear molecules by heating in 10 mM NaCl at 77 degrees C or in 100 mM NaCl at 90 degrees C for 15 min. Heat-generated linear hepatitis B virus DNA was reannealed to circular molecules by incubating in higher salt concentrations. The identity of the molecular forms was established by their electrophoretic mobility and appearance in electron micrographs. Recircularization was blocked by reacting linear molecules with nuclease S1 or avian myeloblastosis virus reverse transcriptase. These results suggest that the heated linear DNA had single-stranded ends with complementary nucleotide sequences. It also suggests that a discontinuity or nick is present in each strand of the circular DNA molecule after the single-stranded region is made double stranded by the virion DNA polymerase reaction. The difference in contour length by electron microscopy of circular and linear molecules spread under aqueous conditions suggested that the discontinuities in the two strands were about 270 base pairs apart. The amount of nucleotide incorporated into the ends of heat-generated linear hepatitis B virus DNA by reverse transcriptase suggested that the single-stranded ends were about 305 bases in length. This fully double-stranded linear DNA was cleaved with EcoRI or HpaI restriction endonuclease. The sum of the two fragments generated by each totaled 3,510 base pairs, 310 base pairs greater than the contour length of circular hepatitis B virus DNA which represents a third estimate of the distance between the discontinuities in the two DNA strands of circular DNA. Restriction endonuclease cleavage also indicated that the ends of heated linear DNA which correspond to the discontinuities in the two strands of the circular DNA are at unique sites in the DNA with respect to the restriction sites.