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Published Online July 11, 2002
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1072266

Reports

Submitted on March 26, 2002
Accepted on June 25, 2002

Chemical Synthesis of Poliovirus cDNA: Generation of Infectious Virus in the Absence of Natural Template

Jeronimo Cello 1, Aniko V. Paul 1, Eckard Wimmer 1*

1 Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, School of Medicine, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794-5222, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: ewimmer{at}ms.cc.sunysb.edu.

Full-length poliovirus cDNA was synthesized by assembling oligonucleotides of plus and minus strand polarity. The synthetic poliovirus cDNA was transcribed by RNA polymerase into viral RNA, which translated and replicated in a cell-free extract resulting in the de novo synthesis of infectious poliovirus. Experiments in tissue culture using neutralizing antibodies and CD155 receptor-specific antibodies and neurovirulence tests in CD155 transgenic mice confirmed that the synthetic virus had biochemical and pathogenic characteristics of poliovirus. Our results show that it is possible to synthesize an infectious agent by in vitro chemical/biochemical means solely following instructions from a written sequence.


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