Sequence variability of Borna disease virus: resistance to superinfection may contribute to high genome stability in persistently infected cells.

ABSTRACT: The RNA genome of Borna disease virus (BDV) shows extraordinary stability in persistently infected cell cultures. We performed bottleneck experiments in which virus populations from single infected cells were allowed to spread through cultures of uninfected cells and in which RNase protection assays were used to identify virus variants with mutations in a 535-nucleotide fragment of the M-G open reading frames. In one of the cell cultures, the major virus species (designated 2/1) was a variant with two point mutations in the G open reading frame. When fresh cells were infected with a low dose of a virus stock prepared from 2/1-containing cells, only a minority of the resulting persistently infected cultures contained detectable levels of the variant, whereas the others all seemed to contain

SUBMITTER: Formella S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC112318 | biostudies-literature | 2000 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature