Mouse thymic virus (MTLV; murid herpesvirus 3) infection in athymic nude mice: evidence for a T lymphocyte requirement.
Mouse thymic virus (MTLV; murid herpesvirus 3) is a lymphotropic herpesvirus that cytolytically infects developing T lineage lymphocytes in the thymus of neonatal mice. MTLV establishes a persistent infection and can be recovered indefinitely from infected mice, but nothing is known about requirements for this persistent infection. In order to determine whether T lineage lymphocytes are required for infection, young adult athymic nude (nu/nu) mice and euthymic littermates were infected with MTLV and tested for virus shedding. Although euthymic littermates regularly shed virus, in the nude mice only about 20% of isolation attempts up to 100 days postinfection were positive. Blind passage yielded an additional three isolations out of 14 samples (21%). In addition, unlike many other herpesviruses, the virus did not replicate in a number of epithelial and fibroblastic cell lines that were tested. These data confirm that the virus is preferentially T lymphotropic and suggest that infection may require T lineage lymphocytes.
Morse
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Rockefeller University, Laboratory Animal Research Center, New York, New York 10021-6399.
D000818:Animals; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D005260:Female; D006564:Herpesviridae / Q000302:isolation & purification / Q000502:physiology*; D006566:Herpesviridae Infections / Q000276:immunology / Q000382:microbiology*; D051379:Mice; D008813:Mice, Inbred ICR; D008819:Mice, Nude; D013601:T-Lymphocytes / Q000382:microbiology* / Q000502:physiology; D014779:Virus Replication