Increased virus budding from Friend erythroleukemic cells treated with dimethyl sulfoxide, dimethyl formamide, and/or...

Chronically infected Friend leukemia cells (FLC), grown in the presence of dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) (2%, v/v), dimethyl formamide (DMF) (1% v/v), or bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) (3 or 20 mug/ml) for 4 or 7 days, were examined under the electron microscope. It was found that at the 4th day all three compounds induced comparable increases in the number of budding viruses (3 to 5 times that of the control). At the 7th day, the number had remained relatively constant in the BrdU-treated cells in contrast to the cells of the DMSO- or DMF-treated cultures, which showed a further increase of budding viruses. The greatest increase was seen when BrdU was added in combination with either DMSO or DMF, and this was reflected in the apparent increase in the number of extracellular viruses seen in cell pellets. Scanning electron microscopy on whole FLC mounts provided a rapid means of counting budding viruses and a good correlation was obtained between these counts and those made on thin sections by transmission electron microscopy. Attempts to quantitate the number of released viruses in controls and treated cultures after 4 days of growth revealed a 5- to 10-fold increase per cell in the samples treated with a combination of BrdU and either DMSO or DMF. Thymidine failed to prevent the increase of budding viruses induced by BrdU treatment. The number of budding viruses found after treatment with 3 mug/ml BrdU in the presence of 12 mug/ml thymidine was at a level comparable to that found after the individual BrdU treatment Finally, although FLC always contained varying amounts of intracisternal particles, their number, as compared to the paired controls, always decreased after BrdU treatment.