24 h later, 100 TCID50 rgEBOV-luc2 in 50 μl medium were added to the cells. 2 days post-infection luciferase activity was determined as described above. Statistical analysis was performed using the

Prism 5 software (GraphPad CH5424802 Software). Z′-factors (separation band/dynamic range of the assay: [(μc+ − 3σc+) − (μc− − 3σc-)]/(μc+ − μc), with μ being mean and σ being the standard deviation of the positive control c+ or the negative control c− of the assay) were calculated as previously described ( Zhang et al., 1999). In order to generate a recombinant EBOV that allows rapid detection of infection, we inserted a Firefly luciferase gene codon optimized for expression in mammalian cells into the EBOV genome between the genes for NP and VP35 (Fig. 1A), similar to published ABT-888 mouse recombinant EBOVs expressing eGFP (Ebihara et al., 2007 and Towner et al., 2005). This virus (rgEBOV-luc2) was readily rescued, and showed only a slight attenuation in Vero cells, when compared to a recombinant wild-type virus (rgEBOV-WT), and reached the same endpoint titers (Fig. 1B). Also, its growth was virtually identical to a recombinant EBOV expressing eGFP (rgEBOV-eGFP) that was rescued in parallel (Fig. 1B). This is consistent with previous observations that insertion of an additional gene at this position has

no or only a slight impact on growth kinetics in vitro, depending on the cell line used ( Ebihara et al., 2007 and Towner et al., 2005). In order to further characterize rgEBOV-luc2, we infected Vero cells with this virus, and measured luciferase activity at 0, 0.5, 1, 2 h post-infection and then every 2 h until 22 h post-infection (Fig. 1C). It has to be noted that in this experiment, which was performed in a 6-well format, we measured the luciferase signal in approximately 200,000 cells, whereas in all other experiments, which were performed in 96-well format, we measured the

luciferase signal in approximately 8000 cells. Mock-infected cell lysates and lysates from cells infected with rgEBOV-WT (Figure S1) as well as the first three time-points (0, 0.5 and 1 h post-infection) did not yield any signal significantly above the background noise of the luminometer, which for the luminometer Selleckchem Fludarabine used was ∼102 RLU (at 1 h post-infection we observed a signal that was 21% above the signal of mock-infected cells; however, this increase was not statistically significant (Student’s t-test: p = 0.07)). In contrast, at 2 h post-infection we detected a significant increase in reporter activity (p = 0.03), indicating that uptake of virus and initiation of viral gene expression require less than 2 h. Using qRT-PCR we have previously shown an increase in viral mRNA levels as early as 4 h post-infection ( Hoenen et al., 2012). The fact that we could detect viral gene expression even earlier using rgEBOV-luc2 highlights the sensitivity of the luciferase reporter.