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. 2004 Feb 23;100(2):246–251. doi: 10.1016/0042-6822(80)90517-6

Effect of sulfhydryl reagents on the infectivity of vesicular stomatitis virus

Sara T Beatrice 1,1, Robert R Wagner 1,2
PMCID: PMC7131400  PMID: 6243427

Abstract

The infectivity of vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) was moderately affected by iodoacetic acid and drastically affected by N-ethylmaleimide; the antiviral effect of these sulfhydryl reagents was enhanced somewhat by the reducing agent, 2-mercaptoethanol. Reducing and/or alkylating reagents did not affect VSV hemagglutination and the impermeable sulfhydryl reagent, dextran-maleimide, did not significantly influence VSV infectivity. These data indicate that glycoprotein spikes are not the major sites for the antiviral activity of sulfhydryl reagents. [14C]Iodoacetic acid was able to penetrate the virion membrane to bind covalently to the free sulfhydryl groups of all five virion proteins, particularly the reduced disulfides of the L protein. The RNA polymerase activity of intact VSV was inhibited by iodoacetic acid and to a greater extent by N-ethylmaleimide, which probably accounts for the loss of viral infectivity caused by the permeable sulfhydryl reagents.

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