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Primary chick embryo cultures were able to photoreactivate ultraviolet-treated pseudorabies virus. Upon exposure to fluorescent light, infected or uninfected chick cells eliminated thymine dimers induced in their deoxyribonucleic acid by ultraviolet irradiation. In contrast, rabbit kidney cells did not photoreactivate the virus or eliminate thymine dimers. Thus, the capacity for photoreactivation appeared to be determined by the ability of the cell to eliminate thymine dimers.

Temperature-sensitive mutants of Sindbis virus fail to grow at a temperature that permits growth of the wild type, but when certain pairs of these mutants, mixed together, infect cells at that temperature, viral growth (i.e., complementation) occurs. The yield from this complementation, however, is of the same order of magnitude as the infectivity in the inoculum. Since in animal virus infections the protein components of the virion probably enter the cell with the viral nucleic acid, it was necessary to demonstrate that the observed complementation required synthesis of new viral protein and nucleic acid rather than some sort of rearrangement of the structural components of the inoculum. To demonstrate that complementation does require new biosynthesis, three biochemical events of normal virus growth have been observed during complementation and correlated with the efficiency of viral growth seen in complementation. These events include: (i) entrance of parental viral ribonucleic acid (RNA) into a double-stranded form; (ii) subsequent synthesis of viral RNA; and (iii) synthesis and subsequent incorporation of viral protein(s) into cell membranes where they were detected by hemadsorption. Although the infecting single-stranded RNA genome of the wild type was converted to a ribonuclease-resistant form, the genome of a mutant (ts-11) incapable of RNA synthesis at a nonpermissive temperature was not so converted. However, during complementation with another mutant also defective in viral RNA synthesis, some of the RNA of mutant ts-11 was converted to a ribonuclease-resistant form, and total synthesis of virus-specific RNA was markedly enhanced. The virus-specific alteration of the cell surface, detected by hemadsorption, was also extensively increased during complementation. These observations support the view that complementation between temperature-sensitive mutants and replication of wild-type virus are similar processes.

The morphogenesis of Sindbis virus was studied by determining the kinetics with which newly synthesized nucleocapsid and envelope proteins appeared in virions released into the extracellular medium. Assembly of the nucleocapsid was more rapid than modification of the cellular membrane by the addition of the viral envelope protein. However, both viral structural proteins were efficiently incorporated into virions; a 0.5-hr pulse-labeling period resulted in the release of maximally labeled virus during the next hour. When protein synthesis was inhibited, release of virus soon declined even though large amounts of both viral structural proteins were present within the cell and ribonucleic acid replication was unaffected.

Ultraviolet light-inactivated frog virus 3 is efficiently photoreactivated by chick embryo cells. A cellular enzyme is presumably responsible for this repair of viral deoxyribonucleic acid, for the phenomenon is insensitive to an inhibitor of protein synthesis and is not seen in mammalian cells that are known to lack photoreactivating enzyme. Since frog virus 3 is a cytoplasmic virus, functionally significant amounts of photoreactivating enzyme are probably present in the cytoplasm of chick embryo cells.

We investigated the metabolic requirements for the decrease in phospholipid synthesis previously observed by Pfefferkorn and Hunter in primary cultures of chick embryo fibroblasts infected with Sindbis virus. The incorporation of 32PO4into all classes of phospholipids was found to decline at the same rate and to the same extent; thus, incorporation of 14C-choline into acid-precipitable form provided a convenient measure of phospholipid synthesis that was used in subsequent experiments. Experiments with temperature-sensitive mutants suggested that some viral ribonucleic acid (RNA) synthesis was essential for the inhibition of choline incorporation, but that functional viral structural proteins were not required. The reduction in phospholipid synthesis was probably a secondary effect of infection resulting from viral inhibition of the cellular RNA and protein synthesis. All three inhibitory effects required about the same amount of viral RNA synthesis; the inhibition of host RNA and protein synthesis began sooner than the decline in phospholipid synthesis; and both actinomycin D and cycloheximide inhibited 14C-choline incorporation in uninfected cells. In contrast, incorporation of 14C-choline into BHK-21 cells was not decreased by 10 hr of exposure to actinomycin D and declined only slowly after cycloheximide treatment. Growth of Sindbis virus in BHK cells did not cause the marked stimulation of phospholipid synthesis seen in picornavirus infections of other mammalian cells; however, inhibition was seen only late in infection.

All Sindbis virus temperature-sensitive mutants defective in “late” functions were systematically surveyed by acrylamide-gel electrophoresis for similarities and differences in the intracellular pattern of virus-specific proteins synthesized at the permissive and nonpermissive temperatures. Only cells infected with mutants of complementation group C showed an altered pattern. At the nonpermissive temperature, these mutants failed to induce the synthesis of a polypeptide corresponding to the nucleocapsid protein and instead overproduced a protein of higher molecular weight than either viral structural protein. This defect was shown to be irreversible by the finding that 3H-leucine incorporated at 41.5 C specifically failed to appear in the nucleocapsid of virions subsequently released at 29 C. Attempts to demonstrate a precursor protein in wild-type infections were inconclusive.

Incubation of Sindbis virus-infected cultures in medium with an ionic strength of 0.105 reduced the virus yield more than 99%. This inhibition was rapidly reversed by exposing the cultures to normal medium: within 20 min the previously inhibited cultures had released as much infectious virus as normal controls had produced during hours of incubation. The following intracellular processes were essentially normal in inhibited, infected monolayers: protein and phospholipid synthesis, the synthesis of infectious viral ribonucleic acid and its incorporation into nucleocapsids, and viral modification of the cell membrane. Accelerated virus production was detected within 20 sec after exposure of inhibited cultures to normal medium. It required an ionic strength greater than 0.145, a pH above 6.7, and a temperature above 21 C. It was not dependent on osmotic pressure, de novo protein synthesis, or a functional energy metabolism. Virus release also occurred in sonic-treated materials of inhibited cells under the same conditions as in living cells. Potential applications of the inhibition to concentration of virus stocks or to obtaining virus in nonphysiological solutions are noted. Preliminary studies with Semiliki Forest virus, Newcastle disease virus, and vesicular stomatitis virus suggest that this phenomenon may be limited to arboviruses.

The interrelationship of viral ribonucleic acid (RNA) and protein synthesis in cells infected by Sindbis virus was investigated. When cultures were treated with puromycin early in the course of infection, the synthesis of interjacent RNA (26S) was preferentially inhibited. A similar result was obtained by shifting cells infected by one temperature-sensitive mutant defective in RNA synthesis from the permissive (29 C) to the nonpermissive (41.5 C) temperature. Under both conditions, the viral RNA produced appeared to be fully active biologically. Once underway, the synthesis of viral RNA in wild-type Sindbis infections did not require concomitant protein synthesis.

Treatment of chick embryo fibroblasts infected with Sindbis virus with TPCK, the choloromethyl ketone derivative of tosyl-phenylalanine and an inhibitor of chymotrypsin, resulted in reduced synthesis of viral structural proteins and the accumulation of a high-molecular-weight polypeptide, thought to be a precursor. The analogous inhibitor of trypsin, TLCK, the chloromethyl ketone derivative of tosyllysine, had no such effect.