Quantitative characterization of defective virus emergence by deep sequencing.

ABSTRACT:

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Populations of RNA viruses can spontaneously produce variants that differ in genome size, sequence, and biological activity. Defective variants that lack essential genes can nevertheless reproduce by coinfecting cells with viable virus, a process that interferes with virus growth. How such defective interfering particles (DIPs) change in abundance and biological activity within a virus population is not known. Here, a prototype RNA virus, vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV), was cultured for three passages on BHK host cells, and passages were subjected to Illumina sequencing. Reads from the initial population, when aligned to the full-length viral sequence (11,161 nucleotides [nt]), distributed uniformly across the genome. However, during passages two plateaus in read count

SUBMITTER: Timm C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3958049 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature