Interaction between two distinct plaque-cloned human immunodeficiency viruses (HIVs): the possible existence of...

To know the biological significance of the HIV variation, we investigated the interaction between two different HIV clones. Two distinct clones were mixed and propagated by infecting MT-4 cells. After passaging the mixture viruses 8 times, and cloning by the plaque method, we obtained not only viruses of homogeneous type like each parental clone but also heterogeneous-type viruses which showed a mixture of two parental viruses with regard to phenotype and genotype. To further segregate a single virus from the mixture, we recloned the heterogeneous viruses using the plaque method. We found that about 40% of recloned viruses from heterogeneous-type viruses were still heterogeneous.