Temperature-sensitive mutants of fowl plague virus: Isolation and genetic characterization

Abstract

Forty-nine temperature-sensitive mutants of fowl plague virus (FPV) strain Rostock and four is mutants of FPV-strain Dobson were isolated by utilizing two methods of plaque screening, after either spontaneous or chemically induced mutagenesis. Twenty-nine of the FPV-Rostock mutants were further characterized by genetic recombination studies and were found to fall into six high frequency recombination groups. The genome segment carrying the is mutation in each group was identified by analyzing the gene composition of ts + recombinants generated from crosses between representatives of each group and ts mutants of FPV-Dobson. It was concluded that the six groups correspond to mutations in six different genome segments, namely, those coding for the P 1, P 2, P 3, HA, NP, and NS proteins.