RESCUE OF SENDAI VIRUS CDNA TEMPLATES WITH CDNA CLONES EXPRESSING PARAINFLUENZA VIRUS TYPE-3 N, P AND L PROTEINS

Several years ago, we reported that a Sendai virus (SeV) defective gen ome (DIH4(UV)) could be rescued in vivo with human parainfluenza virus type 1 (hPIV1) and bovine PIV3 but not by measles virus or vesicular stomatitis virus. It was concluded that the cis-acting RNA sequences w ere conserved within the SeV/PIV1/PIV3 group but that interactions bet ween the polymerase complex (P-L) and the template protein N were uniq ue for each virus. We have re-examined these conclusions using protein s expressed from cloned N, P and L genes for SeV and PIV3. The results demonstrate the specificity of the protein-protein interactions betwe en polymerase and template, and confirm the prediction of the earlier work that PIV3 N, P and L proteins are capable of assembling and repli cating SeV mini-genomes also expressed from a cDNA clone.