Two types of morphological transformation of bovine kidney cells infected in vitro with SV40.

Abstract

Two types of morphological transformation of bovine kidney cells were obtained after inoculation with SV40. Primary cultures inoculated were transformed into cultures with epithelioid cells growing mainly in monolayer. When the kidney cells were subcultivated and infected at the 6th passage, another type of transformation, characterized by epithelioid and fibroblastic cells growing in a disorganized multilayer, was seen. Cell lines were obtained from both types of transformed cultures. The epithelioid cell cultures were found to be free of infectious SV40 whereas the cultures composed of epithelioid as well as fibroblastic cells yielded virus even at high passage levels. Both types of transformed cultures contained the complement-fixing “tumor antigen”. A comparison between the cultures as regards their susceptibility to various viruses showed that the epithelioid cell cultures were more susceptible to parainfluenza virus type 3 than the cultures with both epithelioid and fibroblastic cells. There were no differences in susceptibility to foot-and- mouth disease virus, bovine enterovirus, infectious bovine rhinotracheitis virus, pseudorabies virus, Newcastle disease virus or bovine viral diarrhoea virus.