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Physicochemical Properties of Marburg Virus: Evidence for Three Distinct Virus Strains and Their Relationship to Ebola Virus

¹ Special Pathogens Branch
and² Influenza Branch, Division of Viral Diseases, Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, Georgia 30333
³ Department of Immunopathology, Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation, 10666 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, California 92037
and⁴ Departments of Pathology and Medicine, Veterans Administration Medical Center (111F), San Diego, California
and University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, U.S.A.

The physicochemical and antigenic properties of three groups of Marburg (MBG) virus isolates, separated temporally and geographically, were compared to each other and to another member of the same family, Ebola (EBO) virus. Each MBG isolate contained seven virion proteins, one of which was a glycosylated surface protein. Peptide mapping of glycoproteins, nucleoproteins (NP) and viral structural protein (VP40) demonstrated extensive sequence conservation in the proteins of viruses isolated over a 13-year period, but homology was not evident in VP24. Some homology between the NPs of MBG and EBO was observed. A close antigenic relationship between MBG strains was found by radioimmunoassay but no evidence was found of antigenic cross-reactivity with EBO viruses. MBG virion proteins are produced from virus-specific monocistronic mRNA species. Five of the seven viral proteins were produced by in vitro translation of these RNAs. MBG virions contained one RNA species with an M_r of 4.2 x 10⁶ and virions had a density of 1.14 g/ml in potassium tartrate. Virus isolates from different outbreaks had distinct T₁ oligonucleotide maps, but had approximately 95% homology in base sequence. No two geographically distinct virus pairs were more closely related to each other than to a third virus isolate. MBG viruses are thus similar to EBO viruses in morphology and other physicochemical properties and are very similar to each other in RNA and protein composition. Each of the three geographically and temporally distinct MBG virus outbreaks appears to have been due to a genetically distinguishable, but antigenically closely related virus strain. In addition, these studies confirm the belief that MBG and EBO viruses are members of the new virus family, the Filoviridae.

Keywords: Marburg virus, Ebola virus, peptide mapping

Received 2 July 1987; accepted 20 April 1988.

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