Improved recovery of rabies virus from cloned cDNA using a vaccinia virus-free reverse genetics system

To improve efficiency of recovery of rabies virus from cloned cDNA, we established a BHK cell clone that stably expresses T7 RNA polymerase, which we named BHK/T7-9. We also constructed new helper plasmids for expression of nucleoprotein and RNA polymerase of the RC-HL strain using the pTM1 plasmid vector, which makes the T7 RNA polymerase-transcripts from the plasmid cap-independent for translation. After co-transfection of these helper plasmids and the previously constructed full-length genome plasmid of the RC-HL strain to BHK/T7-9 cells, recombinant rabies virus was efficiently recovered from the cloned cDNA.