Replication of vesicular stomatitis virus in murine spleen cells: enrichment of the virus-replicating lymphocytes and analysis of replication restriction.

Vesicular stomatitis virus (Indiana strain) will only grow in T lymphocytes which have been stimulated to undergo cell division. Evidence is presented that a considerable enrichment of the vesicular stomatitis virus-replicating T cells may be accomplished in the mouse spleen by passing the spleen cells over glass wool columns. By using this procedure experiments were performed to study the nature of the block in vesicular stomatitis virus replication in unstimulated (nonpermissive) versus mitogen-stimulated (permissive) splenic T cells. The results show that, as is the case in permissive T-cell lines, stimulated normal T cells allow the synthesis of the 42S virion ribonucleic acid.