Systematic Veterinary Virology

CULTIVATION

• Rinderpest virus is readily cultivable in cell culture. Some of the common cell cultures used for cultivation of rinderpest virus are calf kidney cells, African green monkey cells (Vero cells), lymphoblastoid cell line, B95a. Specific cytopathic effects (CPE) develop after three days.
• The CPE are in the form of small foci of rounded retractile cells with long cytoplasmic processes, stellate cells and small multinucleate syncytia with irregular shapes.
• With further incubation, the CPE generalizes to involve large areas of the cell sheet and, by the ninth or tenth day after inoculation cells peal off from the surface. Rarely the syncytia may become highly vacuolated.
• The laboratory animal of choice for virus growth is rabbits. Rinderpest virus also grows in the chorioallantoic membrane of embryonated eggs, but no lesions are produced.