Studies Of Gastroenteritis Viruses By Electron Microscop

Niaid Extramural Activities

Investigators

Abstract

The electron microscope continues to provide important support to the research program of the Epidemiology Section of LID focussed on the study of enteric diseases. Past highlights of these investigations have included inquiry into the etiology of diseases of unknown cause and studies of fastidious agents of disease that defied cultivation in any cell culture system. The electron microscope, as a unique instrument played a major role in the discoveries of the 27nm Norwalk virus and the establishment of its etiologic role in human diarrheal disease and of the 27nm hepatitis A virus particle and establishment of its etiologic role. Although intensive efforts have been made by numerous groups of investigators, the Norwalk and related human enteric caliciviruses have yet to be cultivated in any tissue culture system. This, along with the recent expression of 27nm virus-like particles of some members of this group of agents, as well as studies of expressed viral proteins of rotavirus, have contributed to the continuing important role of the electron microscope in the research program of the Epidemiology Section. The electron microscope continues to be the only method (i) for direct detection of the noroviruses and derivative 27nm expressed virus-like particles and (ii) for unraveling the antigenic relationships among these fastidious agents. Since the studies noted in the previous annual report, the electron microscope was used in individual experiments as support for other studies such as examining a stool suspension prepared from a patient at Walter Reed Hospital who had intractable diarrhea, by immune electron microscopy using gamma globulin or the patient's early and late sera, examining stool suspensions from patients with diarrhea in an outbreak of gastroenteritis in an elderly care facility of Johns Hopkins University, examining the morphology of recombinant baculovirus expressed rotavirus virus-like particles (VLPs), screening for norovirus MD-145 capsid formation in plant material, screening several bands from a CsCl gradient of feline calicivirus, and examining thin sections of infected cells for rotavirus morphogenesis. (The thin sectioning was not done at NIH.)