Spontaneous curing of a minute virus of mice carrier state by selection of cells with an intracellular block of viral replication.

We previously described a persistent infection established by the lymphotropic minute virus of mice in mouse L cells at the level of the cell population (D. Ron, P. Tattersall, and J. Tal, J. Virol. 52:63-69, 1984). This carrier state is maintained by a series of consecutive phenotypic changes which take place in both the cells and the virus and is cured spontaneously after 150 to 200 cell generations (D. Ron and J. Tal, J. Virol. 55:424-430, 1985). We show here that the cure was caused by the selection of virus-resistant cells in the culture. The resistance of these survivor cells to virus replication was due to an intracellular block. Infection of a spontaneously cured culture with the fibrotropic parental minute virus of mice resulted in a restrictive infection in which the viral replicative-form DNA was formed and amplified, but the synthesis of single-stranded progeny DNA was markedly reduced. The lymphotropic strain was blocked in these cells at an earlier stage, with little or no amplification of viral replicative-form DNA observed. These data indicate that the replication of minute virus of mice requires host-coded helper functions in at least two stages of its growth cycle.