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Hybridization Studies with the RNA of the ws Strain of Influenza Virus and its Neurotropic Variant NWS

Department of Medical Microbiology University of Liverpool, Liverpool

C. Scholtissek

Institut für Virologie Justus-Liebig Universität, Giessen, Germany

The ws strain of influenza A virus was the first to be isolated from man (Smith, Andrewes & Laidlaw, 1933) and was propagated successively in ferrets and mice by intranasal infection, and on the chorioallantoic membrane of chick embryos. WS is unique among human influenza viruses in that it gives rise to variants which are neurovirulent for mice inoculated intracerebrally (Stuart-Harris, 1939; Francis & Moore, 1940). Many subsequent attempts to isolate neurotropic variants from other A0, A1 or A2 human influenza viruses have failed.

It can only be a matter of speculation how such variants as NWS (Stuart-Harris, 1939) might have arisen from WS. The antigenic constitution of the two strains appears to be identical, but NWS differs from WS in a number of laboratory properties other than neurotropism (Burnet & Lind, 1951; Hobson et al. 1968). Both the neurotropism and the laboratory markers of NWS breed true on limiting dilution passage in chick embryos, or after plaque purification in tissue cultures of chick embryo fibroblasts.

Received 25 June 1970; accepted 23 July 1970.