Keywords

Parainfluenza virus; Persistently infected cells; Fusion; RNA virus

Abstract

An acute infection (AI) with RNA virus can progress to a persistent infection (PI) where infected cells continue to grow and replicate while producing progeny virions. PIs with respiratory viruses are clinically important, as they can lead to prolonged shedding of viruses and generation of mutant viruses that are altered in pathogenesis and/or immune responses. Parainfluenza type 5 (PIV5) is a prototypic RNA virus shown to cause PIs in cell culture. Plaques in tissue culture from an acute infection with parental PIV5 were homogeneous in size and shape. By contrast, plaques from PIV5 persistently infected cells were heterogeneous, having a variety of sizes, shapes, and cloudiness. I tested the hypothesis that virus isolated from the PI virus population behavior would differ from that of the PI virus population. An individual large plaque was isolated from the virus population coming from PI cells. The isolated plaque was used to create an Isolated Plaque PI virus stock.  Cells infected with Parental virus, PI virus and Isolated Plaque PI virus were compared in terms of loss of confluence, syncytia formation, gene expression and cell-viability. The results of this study indicate that an individual PI virus variant behaves differently than the PI virus population. This is important for understanding how an AI with parental virus can evolve during a PI to yield viruses with differing phenotypes.

Thesis Completion Year

2026

Thesis Completion Semester

Spring

Thesis Chair

Parks, Griffith

College

College of Medicine

Department

Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences

Thesis Discipline

Biomedical Sciences

Language

English

Access Status

Open Access

Length of Campus Access

None

Campus Location

Orlando (Main) Campus

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