Sindbis Virus Maturation

Sindbis virus, a group A arbovirus, is composed of a nucleocapsid and a glycolipoprotein membrane (Pfefferkorn & Hunter, 1963a; Strauss et al. 1968; Schelle & Pfefferkorn, 1969). The membrane protein is specified by the virus genome (Pfefferkorn & Clifford, 1964; Strauss et al. 1968; Strauss, Burge & Darnell, 1969) whereas the phospholipids and carbohydrate are derived from the host of origin (Pfefferkorn & Hunter, 1963b; Burge & Strauss, 1969; Strauss, Burge & Darnell, 1970) during maturation by budding through the membranes of cytopathic vacuoles (CPV) or the plasma membranes of the infected cell (Grimley, Berezesky & Friedman, 1968; Hackett et al. 1968; Holmes, Wark & Warburton, 1969; Nakai, Shand & Howatson, 1969). We have studied the maturation of Sindbis virus with the use of ferritin-conjugated antibody.

After exhaustive adsorption with normal chick embryo cells, the globulin fraction precipitated from rabbit anti-Sindbis serum (Keckwick, 1940; Strauss et al. 1960) was conjugated with ferritin (Singer, 1959; Hsu, Rifkind & Zabriski, 1963; Rifkind, Hsu & Morgan, 1964).