ESTABLISHMENT AND CHARACTERIZATION OF MURINE CELLS CONSTITUTIVELY EXPRESSING THE FUSION, NUCLEOPROTEIN AND MATRIX PROTEINS OF MEASLES-VIRUS

To advance our understanding of the immunobiology of measles virus (MV ) infections, we have investigated the possibility of establishing cel l lines constitutively expressing the individual MV antigens. In contr ast to previously published studies, we show that it is possible to es tablish cell lines expressing high levels of fusion (F), nucleoprotein (NP) and matrix (M) MV proteins. Once cloned, the cell lines were sta ble with high levels of expression for more than six months. The size and cell distribution of the NP and F proteins were similar to those o bserved in MV- or vaccinia-MV recombinant-infected cells. In contrast, the distribution of the M protein, although being similar to that of MV-infected cells, differed from that of Vaccinia-M recombinant virus- infected cells. Preliminary results suggest that these cell lines will be useful tools for studying the contribution of individual MV antige ns to the cell-mediated immune response to this virus.