Studies on the generation of vesicular stomatitis virus (Indiana serotype) defective interfering particles

Abstract

Using freshly cloned vesicular stomatis virus (Indiana serotype) (VSV IND) serial undiluted high-multiplicity passage in four different cell lines has produced different size classes of defective interfering (DI) particles at different passage numbers. The same clonal isolates of VSV in a given cell type appear to produce identical patterns of particles, although different clonal isolates produce different size classes of DI particles. Thus, the classes of DI particles generated during serial passages appear to relate in some way to the clone of virus and to the type of host cell used. All the DI particles generated in different cell types are capable of homologous interference in any cell type. Oligonucleotide sequence analyses of five DI particle RNAs indicate that they are all generated from a specific region of the standard B virion genome and contain only negative-stranded genomic RNA.