Some Applications of Detergents to the Study of the Virus of Foot-and-Mouth Disease

SUMMARY: The v i rus of foot-and-mouth disease is highly resistant to the deter-gents sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS), cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) and Tween 80. Results are recorded which show the possibilities of using SDS in the extraction of virus from infected cells, in concentrating virus by elution from adsorbents, and in increasing yields in the filtration and ultracentrifugation of virus suspensions. Since the work of Burnet & Lush (1940), who found that the viruses of herpes, louping ill, influenza, myxomatosis, psittacosis and vaccinia were inactivated by anionic detergents, there have been few investigations of the effect of synthetic detergents on animal viruses. Only two viruses appear to have been added to those above, those of lymphocytic choriomeningitis (Stock & Francis, 1943) and the Rous sarcoma (Guerritore, 1957,1958), both also inactivated by anionic and cationic detergents. One of the present authors (H.V.T.) and Miss J. Rogers have observed that the virus of vesicular stomatitis is inacti-vated by anionic and cationic detergents (unpublished). Studies of the action of bile salts, naturally-occurring detergents, however, show that inactivation is by no means general. Galloway (1931) obtained results which indicated that the virus of foot-and-mouth disease resisted the action of sodium deoxycholate at concentrations up to 10 yo (w/v), and Theiler (1957) showed that although all the arthropod-borne viruses he tested were inactivated by a l / l O O O dilution of this salt, strains of the viruses of polio-myelitis, encephalomyelitis, Coxsackie disease and encephalomyocarditis were resistant a t this concentration. It is shown in the present paper that the virus of foot-and-mouth disease is highly resistant to a t least three synthetic detergents, one anionic (sodium dodecyl sulphate) one cationic (cetyl trimethylammonium bromide) and one non-ionic (Tween 80). In addition, some ways are presented in which the resistance to sodium dodecyl sulphate may be exploited in studies of the virus. These might also be of use in the study of other resistant viruses