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Journal of Virology, December 1998, p. 9844-9854, Vol. 72, No. 12
Department of Microbiology and
Immunology,1
Institute of Preventive
Medicine,3 and
Graduate Institute of
Life Science,4
National Defense Medical
Center,
Received 20 April 1998/Accepted 9 September 1998
Upon infection of Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV), baby hamster
kidney (BHK-21) and Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells were killed by a
mechanism involved in apoptosis. While readily established in a variety
of cell lines, JEV persistence has never been successfully instituted
in BHK-21 and CHO cells. Since stable expression of human
bcl-2 in BHK-21 cells has been shown to delay JEV-induced apoptosis, in this study we investigated whether JEV
persistence could be established in such cells. When constitutively
expressing bcl-2, but not its closest homolog,
bcl-XL, following a primary lytic infection,
approximately 5 to 10% of BHK-21 and CHO cells became persistently JEV
infected during a long-term culture. From the persistent bulks,
several independent clones were selected and expanded to form
stable cell lines that continuously produced infectious virus without
marked cytopathic effects (CPE). Among these stable cell lines, the
truncated nonstructural protein 1 (NS1) was also detected and
was indistinguishable from the NS1 truncations previously observed in
JEV-persistent murine neuroblastoma N18 cells. However, the stable
expression of NS1 alone, regardless of whether it was truncated or full
length, failed to render the engineered cells persistently infected by
JEV, implying that aberrant NS1 proteins were likely a consequence
of, rather than a cause for, the viral persistence. Enforced
bcl-2 expression, which did not affect virus
replication and spread during the early phase of cytolytic infection,
appeared to attain JEV persistence by restriction of
virus-induced CPE. Our results suggest that it is the
antiapoptotic, rather than the antiviral, effect of cellular bcl-2 which plays a role in the establishment of JEV persistence.
0022-538X/98/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1998, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Antiapoptotic but Not Antiviral Function of Human
bcl-2 Assists Establishment of Japanese Encephalitis
Virus Persistence in Cultured Cells
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of
Microbiology and Immunology, National Defense Medical Center, P.O.
Box 90048-505, Taipei 100, Taiwan, Republic of China. Phone: (886) 2-2367-5774. Fax: (886) 2-2368-1038. E-mail:
chinglen{at}ms1.hinet.net.
Journal of Virology, December 1998, p. 9844-9854, Vol. 72, No. 12
0022-538X/98/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1998, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
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