Recombinant Lassa Virus Expressing Green Fluorescent Protein as a Tool for High-Throughput Drug Screens and Neutralizing Antibody Assays.

ABSTRACT: Lassa virus (LASV), a mammarenavirus, infects an estimated 100,000⁻300,000 individuals yearly in western Africa and frequently causes lethal disease. Currently, no LASV-specific antivirals or vaccines are commercially available for prevention or treatment of Lassa fever, the disease caused by LASV. The development of medical countermeasure screening platforms is a crucial step to yield licensable products. Using reverse genetics, we generated a recombinant wild-type LASV (rLASV-WT) and a modified version thereof encoding a cleavable green fluorescent protein (GFP) as a reporter for rapid and quantitative detection of infection (rLASV-GFP). Both rLASV-WT and wild-type LASV exhibited similar growth kinetics in cultured cells, whereas growth of rLASV-GFP was slightly impaired. GFP reporter ex

SUBMITTER: Cai Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6266387 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature