Infectivity of Friend murine leukemia virus for hamster cells.

Hamster-adapted Friend murine leukemia virus (F-MuLV) infected hamster cells and produced an XC-positive progeny. However, the sensitivity of hamster-adapted F-MuLV's to hamster cells was about 100 times lower than that to mouse cells. Hamster cells chronically infected with F-MuLV in vitro produced progeny virus in titers comparable to those in similarly infected mouse cells. Xenotropic and amphotropic murine leukemia virus can infect hamster cells when phenotypically mixed with the F-MuLV. Murine sarcoma virus pseudotyped with the F-MuLV easily induced sarcomas in hamsters and transformed hamster cells in vitro.