Preparation of a cell line persistently infected with maedi/visna virus and production of viral antigens

SUZUKI, Kazuya; OGUMA, Keisuke; SENTSUI, Hiroshi

Three cell lines were selected for the preparation of MVV-infected cells in the present study. The first cell line, ZZ-R, originates from the tongue of a fetal goat, an animal sensitive to MVV. The cell line was obtained from Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut, (Federal Research Institute for Animal Health, Federal Republic of Germany; Catalog number CCLV-RIE 127) and cultivated in Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium (DMEM) and Ham's F12 medium at a 1:1 ratio supplemented with 10% of fetal bovine serum (FBS) [3] . The second cell line, FLK-N3, originated from a fetal lamb kidney and was obtained from the National Institute of Animal Health (Tsukuba, Japan) [10] . The cells showed a cytopathic effect (CPE) after infection with the MVV M88 strain [10] . The third cell line, CCL-88, originated from bat lung fibroblasts and was acquired from ATCC. The cell line is sensitive to bovine leukemia virus (BLV), one of ruminant retroviruses, and a persistently BLV-infected cell lines have been established [6] . FLK-N3 and CCL-88 cells were cultivated in Eagle's minimum essential medium (MEM) containing 10% of FBS. All culture media were supplemented with 100 units/ml penicillin and 100 µg/ml streptomycin.