Production of Viral Particles from a Chikungunya Virus Infectious Clone

Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) is a positive-sense single-stranded RNA virus, which poses challenges for its study and genetic manipulation. Because direct mutagenesis of viral RNA genomes is technically impractical, reverse genetics systems are essential tools for investigating viral biology. To enable such approaches, infectious clones containing a full-length cDNA copy of the viral genome are constructed. The cDNA is positioned under the control of a bacteriophage RNA polymerase promoter, allowing commercial RNA polymerases to use the linearized plasmid as a template for the in vitro transcription of full-length viral genomic RNA (gRNA). Importantly, positive-sense viral genomes serve as mRNAs for the translation of viral proteins in a cellular environment, meaning that these transcripts contain all the information required to initiate viral replication. Following transfection into permissive cultured cells, viral proteins are expressed, enabling genome replication and, ultimately, the recovery of infectious particles from the cell supernatant. Here, we describe a detailed procedure for generating CHIKV particles through plasmid linearization, in vitro transcription, and subsequent RNA transfection.