Using G-deleted vesicular stomatitis virus to probe the innate anti-viral response

A method is described for the use of a G-deleted, conditionally replicating version of vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) to measure alterations to the innate anti-viral state of cells in vitro. By co-transfecting a gene of interest with an expression vector for VSV-G one can directly measure the replication of the virus in the transfected cells as non-transfected cells will fail to produce infectious progeny due to the lack of glycoprotein in these non-transfected cells. This allows the investigator to focus exclusively on the anti-viral state induced or inhibited in the transfected cells allowing for screening and quantitative analysis of viral or cellular genes that may modify the anti-viral state.