Characterization of Murine Coronavirus RNA by Hybridization with Virus-specific cDNA Probes

Abstract

Genome RNA of mouse hepatitis virus (MHV) strain A59 was used as a template to synthesize 2 virus-specific probes: c[complementary]DNArep, representing the majority of sequences of the genome RNA and cDNA3'', representing the 3'' end of the genome RNA. Molecular hybridization with these cDNA was used to characterize both genome RNA and intracellular virus-specific RNA. Hybridization of genome RNA of MHV strains A59, JHM and MHV-3 with A59 cDNArep showed that, although these 3 strains exhibit different pathogenicities, they contain closely related nucleotide sequences. Hybridization of intracellular RNA from MHV-infected [mouse] cells with virus-specific cDNA shows that the majority of virus-specific RNA is polyadenylated, virus-specific intracellular RNA contains 6 subgenomic species of the same polarity as genome RNA and all subgenomic RNA contain the same 3'' sequences as the genome RNA and thus form a nested set of RNA.