Abstract
Recent studies1 have demonstrated that eukaryotic simian virus 40 (SV40) genes carried in a bacterial plasmid can be directly transferred into mammalian cells in culture; after polyethylene glycol (PEG)-induced fusion with bacterial protoplasts, a fraction of the recipient cells yielded infectious virus. We have now investigated whether this procedure can also produce stable transformants. We report here that the efficiency of focus formation after transfer of either polyoma virus or SV40 early genes was at least equal to that observed after infection with virions. At high ratios of bacteria/recipient cells, all the cells were observed to express the early viral proteins 48 h after fusion. In optimal conditions, transfer by fusion thus seems to be 10- to 20-fold more efficient than DNA transfection by the Ca2+ co-precipitation technique2 for the introduction of foreign genes into eukaryotic recipients.
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Rassoulzadegan, M., Binetruy, B. & Cuzin, F. High frequency of gene transfer after fusion between bacteria and eukaryotic cells. Nature 295, 257–259 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1038/295257a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/295257a0
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