Recovery of Recombinant Marburg Virus by Reverse Genetics

Reverse genetics systems can be used to study parts or all of the viral life cycle. Recovery systems are reverse genetics systems used for the generation of infectious recombinant viruses that can carry targeted mutations or express reporter genes. The former can help address basic research questions to better understand certain steps of viral replication, while recombinant viruses expressing reporter genes, such as luciferases or fluorescent proteins, can be used for drug screening assays. Accordingly, recombinant viruses can be of great use for a variety of research purposes, including antiviral compound screenings and development of other countermeasures if no virus isolates are available. In this protocol, we describe a T7-driven reverse genetics system to generate recombinant Marburg virus from full-length cDNA.