The surface envelope protein gene region of equine infectious anemia virus is not an important determinant of tropism in vitro

Abstract

Virulent, wild-type equine infectious anemia virus (EIAV) is restricted in one or more early steps in replication in equine skin fibroblast cells compared with cell culture-adapted virus, which is fully competent for replication in this cell type. We compared the sequences of wild-type EIAV and a full-length infectious proviral clone of the cell culture-adapted EIAV and found that the genomes were relatively well conserved with the exception of the envelope gene region, which showed extensive sequence differen…