A short description of the adenovirus group

Abstract

Progress in the study of adenoviruses has reached a level that may justify an attempt to define and classify them. For this purpose, the Virus Subcommittee of the International Nomenclature Committee appointed a study group to prepare a statement on adenoviruses in accordance with the system agreed upon during the VIIIth International Congress of Microbiology in August, 1962. This system is based mainly on the chemical and structural characterization of the infectious virus particle or virion. As only a relatively small number of adenovirus types have been adequately investigated in this respect, the inclusion of viruses in the group has been based in the past mainly on the criteria established by Rowe et a1. (1955)) namely ether resistance, behaviour in tissue cultures, production of a group-specific soluble antigen, and lack of pat’hogenicity for laboratory animals. In the present description it is accepted that failure of a given virus to fulfill these crit,eria does not justify its exclusion from the group, provided it can be shown to conform to the basic chemical and structural characterization of adenoviruses. The group is divided, according to natural hosts, into 6 subgroups represented by human, simian, bovine, canine, murine, and avian adenoviruses. This arbitrary classification may require modifications in the future, especially since possibIe antigenic relationships between serotypes belonging to different subgroups are still to be excluded. Further invest,igations of this point is highly desirable. Several of the subgroups of adenoviruses can be further divided into a number of types on the basis of type-specific serological tests. A total of 44 types have been identified so far, and this number is almost certain to increase in the future. A survey of the literature is beyond the scope of the present report, and for this, reference is made to review articles by Enders et ul. (1956)) Hilleman (1957)) Hueb;, ner et al. (1957,1958), Pereira (1959) i Gins: berg (1962)) and Rowe and Hartley (1962).