DEVELOPMENT OF ROTAVIRUS MOLECULAR EPIDEMIOLOGY - ELECTROPHEROTYPING

Early in the era of rotavirology it was realized that the characterist ic patterns of bands produced in polyacrylamide gels following electro phoresis of genomic dsRNA were useful for checking the identity of rot avirus isolates. However it was Romilio Espejo who first proposed the use of this technique for epidemiology, although most others did not t ake the suggestion seriously because the technique was then rather spe cialized and RNA staining methods were not very sensitive. Using sampl es collected by Ruth Bishop in Melbourne following the original identi fication of human rotaviruses, Sue Rodger recorded the ''electropherot ypes'' of all samples available to 1979 and painstakingly compared the m, side by side (since minor variations in conditions, especially temp erature, alter the relative migration distances of dsRNA bands). These efforts produced the first longitudinal, extensive study of human rot avirus strain variation. Since then, technical improvements have great ly increased the sensitivity of the procedures, and electropherotyping has been recognized as a powerful and economical method for epidemiol ogical studies of rotaviruses.