Temperature affects reptarenavirus growth in a permissive host-derived in vitro model

Supplementary Material for 'Temperature affects reptarenavirus growth in a permissive host-derived in vitro model' as described in Journal of General Virology.

In this data repository, the supplementary material (17 figures and 5 tables) of the study entitled "Temperature affects reptarenavirus growth in a permissive host-derived in vitro model" is available. In this in vitro study we analysed the effect of the ambient temperature on reptarenaviruses, the aetiological agent of boid inclusion body disease (BIBD), an ultimately lethal disease that threatens captive boid snake collections as well as wild boa constrictors. BIBD diagnostic hallmark consists in cytoplasmic inclusion bodies (IBs), mainly composed of viral nucleoprotein (NP), in various cell types of the affected animal. In a previous study we showed that reptarenavirus replication and IB formation is efficient in cell cultures maintained at 27-30°C but it is hindered if cells are kept at 37°C, the temperature commonly used for mammalian cell cultures. Here, considering the poikilothermic nature of their reptilian hosts, we were specifically interested in elucidating the optimal permissive temperature range for reptarenaviruses.

We therefore incubated Boa constrictor kidney-derived I/1Ki cells, highly permissive to reptarenavirus infection, at different temperatures (24-36°C) and inoculated them with University of Giessen virus 1 (UGV-1). We assessed both cell growth and virus proliferation, the latter via qRT-PCR measurements of viral RNA release per cell and via morphometric analyses on sections of cell pellets immunostained for reptarenavirus NP. We found that the optimal temperature ranges for boid cell growth and reptarenavirus replication overlap at about 32°C.