Measles virus attenuation associated with transcriptional impediment and a few amino acid changes in the polymerase and accessory proteins.

Measles virus (MV) isolated in B95a cells, a marmoset B-cell line, retains full pathogenicity for cynomolgus monkeys, while its derivative obtained by adaptation to the growth in Vero cells, a monkey kidney cell line, loses the pathogenic potential (F. Kobune, H. Sakata, and A. Sugiura, J. Virol. 64:700-705, 1990). Here, we show with a pair of strains, a fresh isolate (9301B) in B95a cells and its Vero cell-adapted form (9301V), that the in vivo attenuation parallels the decrease of replication and syncytium-inducing capabilities in the original B95a cells and that these in vitro phenotypes are attributable to impediment of transcription, which is already obvious at the level of primary transcription catalyzed by the virion-associated RNA polymerase. On the other hand, cell fusion assays detected no functional difference between the glycoproteins of the two viruses. Essentially the same transcriptional impediment with reduced syncytium induction following Vero cell adaptation was found with two other pairs of strains that had been similarly prepared. Nucleotide sequence comparison between the 9301B and 9301V viruses revealed that a few (at most five) amino acid changes, which sporadically took place in the polymerase (L and P proteins) and/or accessory V and C proteins, were responsible for the in vitro and in vivo attenuation through adaptation to growth in Vero cells.