Separation of morphological conversion and virus production in Rous sarcoma virus infection.

Abstract

Rous sarcoma virus (RSV), a moderate (Temin and Rubin, 1959) RNA containing virus (Crawford and Crawford, 1961) can infect cells from chick embryos in vitro. After exposure to RSV, the chick cells undergo a rapid change in cell morphology and growth properties (Manaker and Groupé, 1956; Temin and Rubin, 1958). The change in cell morphology is perhaps best seen in infected cultures of differentiated cells of the iris epithelium of the chick embryo (Ephrussi and Temin, 1960). After exposure to one strain of RSV, morphr, the flat, pigmented cells change into round, non-pigmented ones. (When the cells are in a confluent monolayer at the time of exposure to virus, this change in cell morphology does not occur until the infected cells are transferred.) If the cells from the iris are infected by another strain of RSV, morphf, another type of change—to long, fusiform cells—occurs. Similar changes occur in...