Re infectivity of naked viral DNA

[Francisco Muril Zerbini]

On 17 May 1995, Ed Rybicki wrote:

> > Subject:       Re infectivity of naked viral DNA
> 
> But you CAN inoculate cDNA clones of plant viruses (and I am sure, of 
> picornaviruses) into susceptible hosts, and get production of native 
> virus - IF you have a suitable promoter that starts transcription at 
> or near the 5'-terminus of the viral RNA, and terminates at or just 
> 3' of the normal 3' terminus.  With plant viruses, cDNA clones of 
> viruses as big as potyviruses (>10kb) have been rendered infectious 
> in this way.  So it is not a dream or so unlikely for mammalian / 
> animal systems; all you need is to get the DNA into a suitable cell, 
> which (given the success of naked DNA vaccines) is not all that 
> difficult.
> 
> Of course, this has very litle to do with Ebola, which ain't like 
> that.

Another example: naked DNA of cauliflower mosaic virus is infectious 
(this is a circular, dsDNA). 

Reference ? Can't remember from the top of my head, but it's one of the 
papers by R.J. Shepherd's group from the late 70's/early 80's (I can get 
the precise reference if there's interest). 

Murilo
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| Murilo Zerbini                   | Out of 3,000,000,000 DNA nucleotides, |
| Dep. of Plant Pathology          | human beings and chimpanzees have     |
| University of California, Davis  | 2,999,400,000 in common.              |
| fmzerbini at ucdavis.edu            |                                       | 
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