Fig. 1.

Construction of recombinant RVs. (A) Recombinant RV SPBN (first letter of each restriction site) is a recombinant clone derived from the wildlife vaccine strain SAD-B19. The SPBN RVG was replaced with a glycoprotein from a highly neurotropic and pathogenic strain, CVS-N2c (rN2c). An additional recombinant clone was designed to examine the role of the LC8 binding site by removing 11 aa containing the LC8 binding site from RVP (rΔLC8-N2c). (B) Relative neuronal specificity index. Viral stocks of CVS-N2c, SPBN, rN2c, and rΔLC8-N2c were titered on both hamster BSR and mouse NA cells in parallel. One-way ANOVA followed by Tukey's test was used to determine the significance of differences between means (∗, P < 0.01; ∗∗, P < 0.001; error bars, standard deviations).