An infectious nonpathogenic molecular clone (19-2-6A) of equine infectious anemia virus (EIAV) was modified by substitution of a 3.3-kbp fragment amplified by PCR techniques from a pathogenic variant (EIAVPV) of the cell culture-adapted strain of EIAV (EIAVPR). This substitution consisted of coding sequences for 77 amino acids at the carboxyl terminus of the integrase, the S1 (encoding the second exon of tat), S2, and S3 (encoding the second exon of rev) open reading frames, the complete env gene (including the first exon ofrev), and the 3′ long terminal repeat (LTR). Modified 19-2-6A molecular clones were designated EIAVPV3.3, and infection of a single pony (678) with viruses derived from a mixture of five of these molecular clones induced clinical signs of acute equine infectious anemia (EIA) at 23 days postinfection (dpi). As a consequence of this initial study, a single molecular clone, EIAVPV3.3#3 (redesignated EIAVUK), was selected for further study and inoculated into two ponies (613 and 614) and two horses (700 and 764). Pony 614 and the two horses developed febrile responses by 12 dpi, which was accompanied by a 48 to 64% reduction in platelet number, whereas pony 613 did not develop fever (40.6°C) until 76 dpi. EIAV could be isolated from the plasma of these animals by 5 to 7 dpi, and all became seropositive for antibodies to this virus by 21 dpi. Analysis of the complete nucleotide sequence demonstrated that the 3.3-kbp 3′ fragment of EIAVUKdiffered from the consensus sequence of EIAVPV by just a single amino acid residue in the second exon of the rev gene. Complete homology with the EIAVPV consensus sequence was observed in the hypervariable region of the LTR. However, EIAVUK was found to contain an unusual 68-bp nucleotide insertion/duplication in a normally conserved region of the LTR sequence. These results demonstrate that substitution of a 3.3-kbp fragment from the EIAVPV strain into the infectious nonpathogenic molecular clone 19-2-6A leads to the production of progeny virus particles with the ability to induce clinical signs of EIA. Therefore, EIAVUK, which is the first pathogenic, cell culture-adapted molecular clone of EIAV to be described, should be of value in identifying viral determinants of pathogenicity.

Serial passage of the prototype (PR) cell-adapted Wyoming strain of equine infectious anemia virus (EIAV) in fetal donkey dermal (FDD) rather than fetal horse (designated fetal equine kidney [FEK]) cell cultures resulted in the generation of a variant virus strain which produced accelerated cytopathic effects in FDD cells and was 100-to 1,000-fold more sensitive to neutralizing antibodies than its parent. This neutralizationsensitive variant was designated the FDD strain. Although there were differences in glycosylation between the PR and FDD strains, passage of the FDD virus in FEK cells did not reduce its sensitivity to neutralizing antibody. Nucleotide sequencing of the region encoding the surface unit (SU) protein from the FDD strain revealed nine amino acid substitutions compared with the PR strain. Two of these substitutions resulted in changes in the polarity of charge, four caused the introduction of a charged residue, and three had no net change in charge. Nucleotide sequence analysis was extended to the region of the FDD virus genome encoding the extracellular domain of the transmembrane envelope glycoprotein (TM). Unlike the situation with the FDD virus coding region, there were minor variations in nucleotide sequence between individual molecular clones containing this region of the TM gene. Although each clone contained three nucleotide substitutions compared with the PR strain, only one of these was common to all, and this did not affect the amino acid content. Of the remaining two nucleotide substitutions, only one resulted in an amino acid change, and in each case, this change appeared to be conservative. To determine if amino acid substitutions in the SU protein of FDD cell-grown viruses were responsible for the enhanced sensitivity to neutralizing antibodies, chimeric viruses were constructed by using an infectious molecular clone of EIAV. These chimeric viruses contained all of the amino acid substitutions found in the FDD virus strain and were significantly more sensitive to neutralizing antibodies than viruses from the parental (PR) molecular clone. These results demonstrated that sensitivity to neutralizing antibodies in EIAV can be conferred by amino acid residues in the SU protein. However, such amino acid substitutions were not sufficient to enhance cytopathogenicity, as the chimeric viruses did not cause excessive degenerative effects in FDD cells, as was observed with the parental FDD virus strain.

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