ABSTRACT
Basic phenomena associated with establishment, maintenance, and reactivation of latent infection must await development of manipulatable in vitro systems amenable to quantitative biochemical study. In an imaginative study involving the use of a temperature-sensitive virus mutant blocked at a late stage of replication, J. McLennon and G. Darby have found that when “reactivation” is attempted by cultivation of latently infected murine ganglia at restrictive temperatures, only satellite cells contain virus antigens. Studies of phenomena associated with latency in Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) infections will be considerably enhanced when a system is available in which latently infected cells can be induced to synchronously produce significant levels of infectious virus. Heterokaryons were formed between EBV genome-containing lymphoblastoid cell lines in which the virus replicative cycle was characteristically blocked at different points in the replicative cycle or between such cells and nongenome-containing cells of lymphoid or epidermal origin.
