Comparison of biophysical and morphological properties of occluded and extracellular nonoccluded baculovirus from in vivo and in vitro host systems.

Electron microscopic examination and buoyant density profiles of nonoccluded Rachiplusia ou and Autographa californica nuclear polyhedrosis viruses purified from both infectious insect hemolymph and cell culture medium revealed that the viruses are enveloped, single nucleocapsids. The envelopes exhibited variation in the amount and degree of fit with regard to the nucleocapsids. This was determined by: (i) electron microscopic observations of virus budding from the surface of infected cells; (ii) electron microscopic observations of negatively stained preparations of pelleted, highly purified, nonoccluded enveloped particles; and (iii) the resolution and density distributions of nonoccluded virus in sucrose gradients after centrifugation to equilibrium; all were compared with virus extracted from polyhedra. Peplomers, ovserved on the surface of enveloped nucleocapsids of nonoccluded virus, are not associated with polyhedra-derived virus. Density gradient analysis indicated that virus from insect hemolymph and culture medium exhibited similar densities of approximately 1.17 to 1.18 g/ml. This is significantly different from the buoyant density of an alkali-liberated, enveloped single nucleocapsid (1.20 g/ml). Results of this study show that the nonoccluded forms of two nuclear polyhedrosis viruses from two different sources, hemolymph and cell culture, are similar with regard to several morphological and biophysical characteristics but are quite different from the alkali-liberated, polyhedra-derived form of the virus.