Repost re: possible reservoir for Ebola/Marburg

[ncel]

"Those who are ignorant of history...." See Fraenkel-Conrat *1956* and 
Gierer and Schramm, 1956, who conclusively showed that tobacco mosaic 
virus RNA by itself is infectious when inoculated into susceptible plants 
with the production of a normal crop of progeny virus (with capsids). But 
then, I guess, to medics plants don't count. They sure rely on them, however,
for survival!
Ted Diener 

On 16 May 1995, Anjeanette Roberts wrote:

> > But RNA????  I work with RNA every day and I cant imagine it being
> > infectious.  RNAses are everywhere and I cant imagine a naked RNA molecule
> > lasting long enough to be infectious...  Could you give me the Refs. for
> those > things??
> > 
> > Thanks
> > 
> > Don
> > Molecular Microbiology and Immunology
> > University of Missouri-Columbia
> > C601591 at showme.missouri.edu
> 
> Don,
> 
>    I believe your best bet for information on infectious viral RNAs would
> be to look at work done in picornaviruses.  It has been known for several
> years that
> positive stranded RNA viruses can serve as mRNA when transfected into
> cells. These + RNA genomes can be manipulated in cDNA clones, and then
> transcribed RNA can be transfected back into cells. Recombinant,
> infectious virus particles result.  These experiments are not possible
> with negative stranded RNA viruses since their genomes can not serve as
> mRNAs.
> 
> AJ
> U Penn Microbiology
> robertsa at cbil.humgen.upenn.edu
> 
>