ISOLATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF GWSS PATHOGENIC VIRUSES

• Author(s): Hammock, Bruce; Kamita, Shizuo; Gill, Sarjeet; Morgan, David;
• Abstract: Insect pathogens such as insect-selective viruses often cause natural epizootics in the field and can be used as a biological control agent or vector for carrying plant or crop protection agent. In order to identify an epizootic, scientists have classically waited for an outbreak of disease and then tried to isolate the causative agent from diseased insects. Alternatively, one can take advantage of the fact that in any population there are multiple infective agents and look for these agents using biochemical and molecular methods. At present there are no known viral epizootics of GWSS. In this project, we are attempting to isolate and characterize viral pathogens of the GWSS using a new approach we call virus mining. In this approach we assume that GWSS pathogenic viruses will be found and can be isolated from any given population as long as the population examined is sufficiently large. Additionally, we are attempting to establish continuous GWSS cell lines that can efficiently support the replication of the GWSS viruses that we isolate. A susceptible cell line is a key to the further characterization and manipulation of a virus and will be beneficial in other areas of GWSS study.
• Publication Date: Dec 2001
• Journal: 2001 Pierce's Disease Research Symposium