VIRUSES WITH RECOMBINANT SURFACE PROTEINS

摘要

Foreign protein segments having specific medically or commercially useful biological functions are incorporated in surface proteins of viruses. The viruses with the incorporated protein segments are convenient agents for introducing the protein segments into animals, such as humans, and are thus useful as vaccines. Small segments of an original protein exhibiting desired functions are identified, and a DNA fragment having a nucleotide base sequence encoding that segment of the protein is isolated from an organism or synthesized chemically. The isolated DNA fragment is inserted into the DNA genome of a virus in a manner such that the inserted DNA fragment expresses itself as the foreign segment of a surface viral protein and in such a way that neither the function of the protein segment nor the function of any viral protein critical for viral replication is impaired.