Flock house virus: a simple model for studying persistent infection in cultured Drosophila cells.
Flock house virus (FHV), isolated from twenty Drosophila melanogaster cell lines, persistently infected with the virus, were examined during successive serial passages by plaque assay and sequence analysis. No phenotypic or genotypic changes in the virus were observed during the establishment of persistent infection, suggesting that it was a cellular modification that led to the first step in establishing the persistent state. Once this state was initiated, the virus was relieved of the need for a functional coat protein to propagate itself and mutations began to accumulate selectively in RNA2, the gene for the coat protein. These changes were manifested by a gradual drift to a smaller plaque population. The replicase activity, coded by RNA1, remained unaltered.
Institute for Molecular Virology, Graduate School and College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
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Dasgupta
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Selling
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Rueckert
D000818:Animals; D002213:Capsid / Q000235:genetics; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D012321:DNA-Directed RNA Polymerases / Q000378:metabolism; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster / Q000382:microbiology*; D016679:Genome, Viral; D007304:Insect Viruses / Q000235:genetics / Q000254:growth & development*; D009154:Mutation; D010641:Phenotype; D012328:RNA Viruses / Q000235:genetics / Q000254:growth & development*; D012367:RNA, Viral / Q000235:genetics; D012692:Serial Passage; D010948:Viral Plaque Assay
D012367:RNA, Viral; D012321:DNA-Directed RNA Polymerases