Investigation of the unstable attenuation exhibited by a chicken anaemia virus isolate

An attenuated chicken anaemia virus (CAV) isolate, cloned isolate 10, which was molecularly cloned from the Cuxhaven-1 CAV after 173 cell-culture passages, was shown previously to recover pathogenicity following 10 passages in young chicks. The consensus nucleotide sequence of the ‘revertant’ (Rev) virus, present as a tissue homogenate, differed from cloned isolate 10 at a single nucleotide residue (nucleotide 1739) that changed amino acid 287 of the capsid protein from alanine to aspartic acid. Subjecting Rev virus to 10 cell-culture passages re-selected viruses with an alanine at this amino acid position. Experimental infections using a molecularly cloned Rev virus isolate demonstrated that the mutation at nucleotide 1739 was not in itself responsible for the recovery of pathogenicity exhibited by the Rev virus. Additional sequence analyses of cloned amplicons provided evidence that the Rev virus population comprised minor, genetically different subpopulations, and provided an indication of CAV's potential for genetic change.