“…The ability of the VSV genome to tolerate foreign transcription units and genes and to accept the replacement of VSV G with a foreign transmembrane glycoprotein has been extremely helpful for studies on the structure and function of these foreign proteins in the context of virus infection (23,31). In addition, rVSVs are being investigated as promising live virus vaccine candidates for several viruses, such as influenza virus, human immunodeficiency virus, and bovine viral diarrhea virus (14,33,36,37). The potential to serve as vaccine candidates is related to the high-titer growth of VSV and rVSVs in many cell lines (20,23,25), the elucidation of a strong cellular and humoral immune response by VSV in vivo (11,24,53), and the normally asymptomatic or mild clinical course of VSV infections in humans (35,48).…”