Abstract
The purpose of this investigation was to compare the effects of different relative humidity (RH) on the microcosmic conformation of the recombinant AAV-2 virion at 22°C. rAAV-2 virions prepared on copper grid were placed in a high, middle or low RH cabinet and incubated for 72, 48 and 24 h, respectively. The rAAV-2 virions were observed by transmission electron microscope and the values of major axis length, minor axis length and ellipticity of the rAAV-2 virions were obtained using the IMS cell image analysis system. After incubation for 48 and 72 h, the major axis length and minor axis length of the rAAV-2 virion started to rapidly decrease in high RH. Conversely, the axis lengths rapidly increased in low RH. Then, the ellipticity of the rAAV-2 virion would almost tend to approach the identical value of 0.9 for 48 and 72 h incubations in high RH. The results suggest that the rAAV-2 virion tended to favor a smaller, round, more stable conformation in high RH compared to low RH which implied that the rAAV-2 virion was probably prone to living in high relative humidity conditions.
Highlights
Viability and infectivity of airborne viruses are affected by many environmental factors such as temperature, relative humidity (RH), high-energy radials, organic and inorganic chemicals, negative oxygen ions, ozone and surface qualities of holders
Virus consisting of only nucleotide and protein without a lipid envelope can survive in high RH conditions (RH > 70%), while virus having a lipid envelope can survive in low RH conditions (RH < 50%)
We found that the effect of different RH on the conformation of rAAV virion without a lipid envelope varied with time
Summary
Viability and infectivity of airborne viruses are affected by many environmental factors such as temperature, relative humidity (RH), high-energy radials, organic and inorganic chemicals, negative oxygen ions, ozone and surface qualities of holders. Most investigators focused on researching the macroscopic effect of environmental temperature and RH on the viability and infectivity of airborne virus (Harper, 1963; Sattar et al, 1984; Ijaz, 1985; Ijaz and Satter, 1987). It was reported in these previous investigations that the effect of environmental RH on the airborne virus with a lipid envelope and on virus without a lipid envelope under an appropriate constant temperature such as room temperature (25°C) was opposite (Akers, 1973; Dejong et al, 1973). The generally accepted concept was that the phage and the virus without a lipid envelope were able to acclimatize to
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