Restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis is one of the tools commonly used to study the molecular epidemiology of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome viruses (PRRSVs). As PRRSVs are genetically variable, the stability of the RFLP pattern of a PRRSV during in vivo replication was evaluated by carrying out 13 sequential pig-to-pig passages (P1 to P13) of PRRSV ATCC VR-2332 in three independent pig lines for a total of 727 days. During P1 the pigs were inoculated with a homogeneous inoculum (CC-01) prepared through a series of plaque purifications, and during P2 to P13 the pigs were inoculated with a tissue filtrate from the corresponding pig in the previous passage. Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) is a plague causing significant economic loss to pig production throughout the world. The PRRS virus, the causative agent, is an RNA virus belonging to the family Arteriviridae (4, 22) and has shown several outstanding characteristics that are strong impediments to effective disease control. Those characteristics are well reviewed in the 2003 PRRS compendium (28). One of those is that PRRS virus continues to change, as evidenced by the high degrees of genetic and antigenic variability that exist among field isolates (2,8,10,11,17,18). Such a high degree of heterogeneity among PRRS viruses prompted the development of molecular tools such as restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis (25), sequencing (2,8,10,11,13,14,17,21), and heteroduplex mobility assay (12) for use in further characterizing the genotypes of PRRS viruses and tracing virus movements within or among herds. All of these methods target open reading frame 5 (ORF5) of PRRS virus, which encodes the major envelope (gp5) protein (15,16,19), since ORF5 has shown the highest genetic variability among PRRS viruses compared to the variabilities of other genes (2, 10).Among the molecular tools available, RFLP analysis is a rapid and relatively inexpensive nucleic acid-based differential test; hence, the technique has been used in numerous fieldbased molecular epidemiological surveys of PRRS viruses reported previously (3,6,9,24). RFLP analysis of PRRS virus starts with PCR amplification of ORF5, followed by digestion of the PCR product with the three restriction enzymes MluI, HincII, and SacII. Then, a three-digit code, based on the pattern of cutting by each enzyme, in the order MluI, HincII, and SacII, is assigned to the virus tested. If necessary, additional restriction enzymes can be added for further characterization of the virus.The foundation for the popular use of RFLP analysis is that the RFLP pattern of a PRRS virus is relatively stable during infection, although the potential for change was suggested (25,26). However, field observations demonstrated the emergence of new RFLP patterns and the disappearance of existing RFLP patterns over a period of time (3). Furthermore, a high level of genetic variability was shown to exist among field isolates of PRRS virus with the same RFLP pattern of cutting ...