Biological and pathogenetic characterization of different isolates of murine gammaherpesvirus 68 (MHV-68) in the context of study of human oncogenic gammaherpesviruses.

Study of murine gammaherpesvirus 68 (MHV-68), which was discovered in 1980 in Slovakia, has led to many important findings regarding gammaherpesviral properties in general. Nowadays, it is considered to be a universal model used for detailed studies to determine pathogenetic, immunological and molecular aspects of oncogenesis in analogy to Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) and Kaposi΄s sarcoma-associated virus (KSHV). The objective of this work is to characterize biological and pathogenetic properties of the virus with an emphasis on our prior results concerning ecology, epidemiology, viral persistence in peritoneal macrophages, detection of malign and benign lymphoproliferations accompanied by the presence of atypical lymphocytes in blood during IM-like and leukemia-like syndromes. We are trying to elucidate the role of virus-specific genes in virulence, pathogenicity and murine gammaherpesvirus oncogenesis by comparison of molecular-biological, pathogenetic and oncogenic potential of MHV-68 isolates and deletion mutant MHV-76 and therefore help to understand the analogical processes that occur in EBV infected patients.