Studies on the adaptation of mumps virus to chick embryo

About 15 serial passages of wild type mumps virus (Sasazaki strain) in the amnion sac of chick embryo (CE) yielded a CE-adapted strain which was poorly replicative and did not form plaques in Vero cells where the wild strain grew well. In the course of this limited replication of the CE-adapted strain in Vero cells, we have analysed the viral protein and RNA synthesis. It was found that protein synthesis took place very efficiently at least early in infection by 12 h. The subsequent rate of synthesis remained, however, at a low level without showing the progressively increasing synthesis observed with the wild strain. Furthermore, 50S genomic RNA was synthesized early in the limited infection, but the subsequent synthesis was markedly suppressed. In addition, the other virus-specific RNA species could not be detected throughout. Thus the amplified RNA synthesis observed in the permissive CE cells and in the wild strain-infection of Vero cells seemed not to occur in the limited replication. Neither interferon nor DI (defective interfering) RNA was involved in the limited virus growth. When Vero cells were infected with the wild strain 6 to 8 h before inoculation of CE-adapted strain, growth restriction was overcome and the yield of the latter virus was greatly enhanced by a factor more than 10(3). These results suggest that through adaptation to CE, mumps virus may be altered in such a way that there is a restriction, probably at a step (s) involved in amplification of the viral RNA synthesis in Vero cells and that the restriction may be overcome by the simultaneous genome expression of the prototype wild strain.