Adaptation of egg-grown and transfectant influenza viruses for growth in mammalian cells: selection of hemagglutinin mutants with elevated pH of membrane fusion.

A series of eight transfectant influenza viruses was generated by reverse genetics for studies of the palmitylated cysteine residues in the cytoplasmic tail of the hemagglutinin glycoprotein (HA). Following amplification of these viruses in MDCK cells we found that all had developed an elevated pH of membrane fusion--an unexpected result since previous mutant HA expression studies had shown that substitutions of the cysteine residues had no effect on fusion properties. Sequence analyses revealed that each of the viruses had at least one additional mutation in the ectodomain of HA which was responsible for the increase in fusion pH. Similarly, when we passaged egg-grown wild-type X-31 virus in three different lines of MDCK cells or in MDBK cells, high pH fusion mutants were selected within a few passages in every case. The locations of the substitutions in the HA structure are in or near the "fusion peptide" or at subunit interfaces throughout the length of the trimer--reminiscent of the changes selected in earlier studies on amantadine resistance. The observation that passage of certain viruses in mammalian cells can result in the selection of mutants with elevated fusion pH has potential implications both for reverse genetic experiments and, perhaps more importantly, for the choice of substrates for propagation of vaccine viruses.