Isolation of naturally occurring viruses of the murine leukemia virus group in tissue culture.

A tissue culture cell system for isolation and identification of members of the murine leukemia virus group (the complement fixation for murine leukemia test) was modified to permit the isolation of naturally occurring virus from leukemic and normal mice. The important factors for increasing the sensitivity of the test were the use of National Institutes of Health (NIH) strain Webster Swiss embryo cell cultures and the selection of rat-immune sera having complement-fixing antibodies to tissue culture antigens of both the Gross and FMR subgroups. In all, 163 strains of mouse leukemia virus, from 11 inbred mouse strains, have been isolated. Representative virus isolates were shown to possess the properties of the murine leukemia virus group; i.e., they were chloroform-sensitive, noncytopathic agents which replicated in mouse embryo tissue culture and produced group-reactive, complement-fixing antigen and budding C-type particles visible by electron microscopy. These viruses could serve as helpers in the rescue of Moloney sarcoma virus genome from non-producer hamster sarcoma cells, yielding pseudotypes. All of the 19 field isolates tested were neutralized by Gross passage A antiserum but not by potent antisera to the Moloney, Rauscher, and Friend strains. Virus was recovered regularly from embryos and from the plasma and spleen of adult mice of high leukemic strains. In low leukemic mouse strains, different patterns of virus detection were observed. In C3H/He mice, virus was occasionally present in embryos and was found in 40% of adult spleens. BALB/c mice were virus-negative as fetuses or weanlings, but spleens of more than half of the mice over 6 months of age yielded virus. NIH mice have never yielded virus. In reciprocal matings between AKR and BALB/c mice, virus recovery from embryos was maternally determined. The development of tissue culture isolation procedures made possible for the first time the application of classical infectious disease methods to the study of the natural history of murine leukemia virus infection.