When SV40 is serially passed in permissive cells at high multiplicity of infection, virus particles with defective genomes accumulate (Uchida et al. 1968; Yoshiike 1968; Tai et al. 1972). Some of these SV40 variants contain cellular DNA sequences covalently linked to viral DNA (Lavi and Winocour 1972). We have observed that after a few high-multiplicity passages of SV40, most of the progeny viruses contained genomes with deletions at many different regions of the DNA (Brockman et al. 1973), and that after prolonged serial passage, viruses with grossly altered genomes evolved, consisting predominantly of cellular DNA but retaining a small portion of SV40 DNA (Brockman et al. 1973). Such variants could provide valuable material for studying SV40 functions.
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Brockman et al. (1974) studied this question.