Читать книгу Principles of Virology - Jane Flint, S. Jane Flint - Страница 94

Some animal virus particles contain nucleic acid polymerases, which can be detected by mixing permeabilized particles with precursors and measuring their incorporation into nucleic acid. This type of assay is used most frequently for retroviruses, many of which neither transform cells nor form plaques. The reverse transcriptase incorporated into the virus particle is assayed by mixing cell culture supernatants with a mild detergent (to permeabilize the viral envelope), an RNA template and primer, and a radioactive nucleoside triphosphate. If reverse transcriptase is present, a radioactive product will be produced by priming on the template. This product can be detected by precipitation or bound to a filter and quantified. Because enzymatic activity is proportional to particle number, this assay allows rapid tracking of virus production in the course of an infection. Many of these assays have been modified to permit the use of safer, nonradioactive substrates. For example, when nucleoside triphosphates conjugated to biotin are used, the product can be detected with streptavidin (which binds biotin) conjugated to a fluorochrome. Alternatively, the reaction products may be quantified by quantitative real-time PCR (see “Detection of Viral Nucleic Acids” below).