Recombinant Tula hantavirus shows reduced fitness but is able to survive in the presence of a parental virus: analysis of consecutive passages in a cell culture

Plyusnina, Angelina; Plyusnin, Alexander

Although relatively short, the observed survival time of the recTULV in the presence of the original variant TUL02 seems to be sufficient for transmission of a recombinant virus, in a hypothetical in vivo situation, from one rodent to another. If transmission is performed in a samplinglike fashion -and this seems to be the case for hantaviruses [13] -the recombinant would have fair chances to survive. The existence of wt recombinant strains of TULV [10] supports this way of reasoning. Evidence for the recombination in the hantavirus evolution continues to accumulate [20, 21] .