Viral vector nomenclature

[Tom Anderson]

Hi all,

This may be a stupid question, but it's one that really bugs me.

Gutless viral vectors, right? Basically, a plasmid with an MCS, viral
packaging signals, and one or two other bits and bobs. You clone a gene
in, do some kind of packaging reaction, and you get out a load of little
blobs that have your construct in the middle and all the viral machinery
needed to deliver it into a cell on the outside.

What do you call those blobs?

I guess most people call them viruses, but to me, a virus means something
that's capable of infecting cells and making copies of itself, which these
things aren't. Some might call them vectors, but a vector is the piece of
DNA you put your gene into at the start, not the finished product. One guy
i worked with called them amplicons, which just seems completely wrong.
Any advances?

Can you call them viruses even though it can't cause a productive
infeection? I mean, just being unable to replicate in normal cells doesn't
disqualify AAV from being a virus. It's just that the only true host for
these blobs is the packaging cell line ...

Also: proteins go into solution, cells go into suspension, but what do
viruses do? Where's the borderline?

tom

-- 
Tom Anderson, MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology, UCL, London WC1E 6BT
(t) +44 (20) 76797264   (f) +44 (20) 76797805   (e) thomas.anderson from ucl.ac.uk