Characterization of vaccinia virus deletion mutants isolated from persistently infected Friend erythroleukemia cells.

Persistent viral infections in vitro are useful to study the evolution of virus populations in the absence of immunological pressure. Several deletion mutants have been isolated in this laboratory from Friend erythroleukemia cells persistently infected with vaccinia virus strain IHD-W, designated SQAvac. Two of the mutants, which remain stable after serial passage in L cells, have been characterized. The deletion which range between 20 to 22 kb, has been localized at the left terminus comprising HindIII fragments C and N. In addition, HindIII B fragment lost the sequences that hybridize to pAG5, a plasmid containing the 3.5 kb terminal sequences and acquired different restriction sites. Phenotypic characterization of these mutants revealed that they were not replication defective since they grew in all cell lines tested and produced plaques of the same size as the wild-type. However, they were less effective in suppressing host protein synthesis. The LD50 for the mutants titered in NIH Swiss female mice was greater than 10(9) PFU as compared to 10(6) PFU for the wild-type, indicating reduced virulence in vivo. These mutants, which display different properties to previously described mutants with deletions at the left terminus, provide another valuable system to study the molecular basis of virulence of vaccinia.