Bacterial Artificial Chromosomes: A Functional Genomics Tool for the Study of Positive-strand RNA Viruses

Journal of Visualized Experiments : JoVE
Sang-Im YunYoung-Min Lee

Abstract

Reverse genetics, an approach to rescue infectious virus entirely from a cloned cDNA, has revolutionized the field of positive-strand RNA viruses, whose genomes have the same polarity as cellular mRNA. The cDNA-based reverse genetics system is a seminal method that enables direct manipulation of the viral genomic RNA, thereby generating recombinant viruses for molecular and genetic studies of both viral RNA elements and gene products in viral replication and pathogenesis. It also provides a valuable platform that allows the development of genetically defined vaccines and viral vectors for the delivery of foreign genes. For many positive-strand RNA viruses such as Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV), however, the cloned cDNAs are unstable, posing a major obstacle to the construction and propagation of the functional cDNA. Here, the present report describes the strategic considerations in creating and amplifying a genetically stable full-length infectious JEV cDNA as a bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) using the following general experimental procedures: viral RNA isolation, cDNA synthesis, cDNA subcloning and modification, assembly of a full-length cDNA, cDNA linearization, in vitro RNA synthesis, and virus recovery. This prot...Continue Reading

Datasets Mentioned

BETA
U51113
JN604986

Methods Mentioned

BETA
PCR
genetic modifications
transfection
in vitro transcription
electrophoresis
density gradient centrifugation

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