合成病毒：对流感病毒研究的贡献

The contribution of synthetic virus to the study of influenza

流感病毒是一种单股负链分节段RNA病毒。完全以质粒为基础的反向遗传学技术的建立和发展解决了利用cDNA克隆人工合成流感病毒的难题和技术障碍,并逐渐成为研究流感病毒及生产流感疫苗的重要基础和手段。重点综述了流感病毒反向遗传技术20多年来的发展过程,以及以质粒为基础的反向遗传操作系统在对流感病毒的生命周期、致病性的研究和生产疫苗等方面的巨大贡献。

Influenza virus is a member of Orthomyxoviridae and contains a segmented RNA genome of negativesense. The artificial generation of influenza viruses from cloned cDNA was long considered an insurmountable obstacle. This changed with the establishment and development of plasmid-based reverse genetics technique that has now become a fundamental part of influenza virus research and the generation of influenza vaccines. In this review, we describe the background for this advance, the systems that are available for the generation of influenza viruses, and the significant contributions for the understanding of the virus and disease during the past decades.