Rescue of influenza A virus from recombinant DNA

We have rescued influenza A virus by transfection of 12 plasmids into Vero cells. The eight individual negative-sense genomic viral RNAs were transcri bed from plasmids containing human RNA polymerase I promoter and hepatitis delta virus ribozyme sequences. The three influenza virus polymerase protei ns and the nucleoprotein were expressed from protein expression plasmids. T his plasmid-based reverse genetics technique facilitates the generation of recombinant influenza viruses containing specific mutations in their genes.