Bovine adenovirus type 3 virions cannot be rescued in vivo after full-length viral genome transfection in the absence of detectable polypeptide IX.

Bovine adenovirus type 3 (BAdV3) is being used in the development of potential vehicles for gene therapy and vectored vaccine. To that end, a more comprehensive description of BAdV3 biology is essential. In this study, we focused on the role of pIX in BAdV3 virion rescue after full-length BAdV3 genome transfection. Initially, pIX deletion or initiation codon mutation abolished the production of progeny virions, which suggested that pIX was essential for the rescue of BAdV3 containing a full-length genome. Moreover, through transfection of a panel of pIX mutant BAdV3 genomes, we observed that the conserved N-terminus and the putative leucine zipper element (PLZP) were essential for virion rescue, whereas the C-terminus following the coiled-coil domain was non-essential. In addition, swap of the PLZP element and its following region of BAdV3 pIX to corresponding domains of human adenovirus type 5 (HAdV5) did not affect virion production, whereas swap of the entire pIX abolished production of progeny virions. We suggest that failure of the full-length BAdV3 pIX swap might be due to species specificity of its N-terminus region before the PLZP element.