Mechanism of poliovirus inactivation by ammonia

Abstract

Poliovirus inactivation by NH3 causes a slight reduction in the sedimentation coefficients of viral particles, but has no detectable effect on either the electrophoretic pattern of viral capsid proteins or the isoelectric points of inactivated particles. These virions still attach to [human cervical carcinoma] to cells, but are unable to repress host translation or stimulate the synthesis of detectable amounts of viral RNA. Although NH3 has no detectable effect on naked poliovirus RNA, it causes cleavage of this RNA when still within viral particles. Therefore, the RNA genome appears to be the only component of poliovirus significantly affected by NH3.