title: Characterization of vesicular stomatitis virus populations by tunable resistive pulse sensing.
abstract: Although transmission electron microscopy (TEM) has historically been the method of choice to estimate concentrations of virus and virus-like particles, these measures can often be time-consuming and labor-intensive to perform. Tunable resistive pulse sensing (TRPS) is an emerging method that applies principles of Coulter counting to nanoscale particles and may provide a simpler and higher-throughput alternative to TEM for the quantitation of virus populations. To assess the performance of TRPS compared to TEM, the samples of polymer spheres at a diameter of 100nm and vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) were characterized using both techniques. TRPS was able to quantify concentrations down to 10(7)particles/ml, providing nearly 50-fold larger measurement range, and more reproducible counts than TEM. Total-to-infectious particle ratio of VSV populations as measured by TRPS and plaque assay suggested that each VSV particle is infectious. In addition to particle counts, TRPS successfully measured particle size distributions based on hundreds of particles. Such high throughput sustained by TRPS can assist quantitative characterization of virus populations.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Systems Biology Theme, Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA. Electronic address: akpinar@uwalumni.com.
authors.forename: Fulya
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Akpinar
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Systems Biology Theme, Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA. Electronic address: john.yin@wisc.edu.
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yin
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002460:Cell Line; D006224:Cricetinae; D005434:Flow Cytometry / Q000379:methods*; D046529:Microscopy, Electron, Transmission / Q000379:methods; D008863:Microspheres; D010316:Particle Size; D014721:Vesicular stomatitis Indiana virus / Q000378:metabolism*; D019562:Viral Load / Q000379:methods*; D010948:Viral Plaque Assay / Q000379:methods
keywords: Coulter counter; Particle quantification; Tunable resistive pulse sensing; Vesicular stomatitis virus; Virus populations characterization