Abstract: Background: Several coronaviruses establish persistent infections in vitro and in vivo, however it is unknown whether persistence is a feature of the severe acute respiratory syndorme coronavirus (SARS-CoV) life cycle. This study was conducted to investigate viral persistence. Methods: We inoculated confluent monolayers of Vero cells with SARS-CoV at a multiplicity of infection of 0.1 TCID50 and passaged the remaining cells every 4 to 8 days for a total of 11 passages. Virus was titrated at each passage by limited dilution assay and nucleocapsi...
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