Differences in the internalization of self-inactivating VSVG-pseudotyped murine leukemia virus-based vectors in human and murine cells

© 2018 Elsevier B.V. Self-inactivating VSVG-pseudotyped murine leukemia virus (SIN-VSVG-MLV) has been widely used to generate stable cell lines and produce gene delivery vectors. Despite the broad cellular tropism of the VSVG-pseudotyped MLV, we observed differential viral transduction efficiency depending on the host cell type used. In order to determine the mechanism underlying these differences, we used a GFP-expressing SIN-VSVG-MLV and analyzed the major steps of viral transduction in different cell lines including human epithelial, T-lymphocytes, monocytes and murine fibroblast cells. We observed the better transduction efficiency in HeLa cells, which was 20-fold higher than THP-1 and NIH/3T3 cells. To quantify viral internalization, we determined genomic RNA content by quantifying the early reverse transcription product. Genomic RNA and transduction levels were correlated with HeLa cells showing the higher amount of early RT product followed by tsA201 cells, while NIH/3T3, Jurka