Construction of a recombinant rhinovirus accommodating fluorescent marker expression.

Background: Rhinovirus (RV) causes the common cold and asthma exacerbations. The RV genome is a 7.3 kb single-strand positive-sense RNA.

Objective: Using minor group RV1A as a backbone, we sought to design and generate a recombinant RV1A accommodating fluorescent marker expression, thereby allowing tracking of viral infection.

Method: Recombinant RV1A infectious cDNA clones harboring the coding sequence of green fluorescent protein (GFP), Renilla luciferase, or iLOV (for light, oxygen, or voltage sensing) were engineered and constructed. RV-infected cells were determined by flow cytometry, immunohistochemistry, and immunofluorescence microscopy.

Results: RV1A-GFP showed a cytopathic effect in HeLa cells but failed to express GFP or Renilla luciferase due to deletion. The smaller fluorescent protein construct, RV1A-iLOV, was stably expressed in infected cells. RV1A-iLOV expression was used to examine the antiviral effect of bafilomycin in HeLa cells. Compared to parental virus, RV1A-iLOV infection of BALB/c mice yielded a similar viral load and level of cytokine mRNA expression. However, imaging of fixed lung tissue failed to reveal a fluorescent signal, likely due to the oxidation and bleaching of iLOV-bound flavin mononucleotide. We therefore employed an anti-iLOV antibody for immunohistochemical and immunofluorescence imaging. The iLOV signal was identified in airway epithelial cells and CD45+ CD11b+ lung macrophages.

Conclusions: These results suggest that RV1A-iLOV is a useful molecular tool for studying RV pathogenesis. The construction strategy for RV1A-iLOV could be applied to other RV serotypes. However, the detection of iLOV-expressing RV in fixed tissue required the use of an anti-iLOV antibody, limiting the value of this construct.