Comparative growth kinetic studies on avian infectious bronchitis virus in different systems.

The growth kinetics of avian infectious bronchitis (AIB) virus in vitro have been investigated previously using different systems, including embryonated chicken eggs (Hitchner and White, 1955), and cell cultures of chick embryo kidney (Lukert, 1965 ; Bulow, 1966; Akers and Cunningham, 1968) or chick embryo liver (Lukert, 1965). Organ cultures of ciliated epithelium have been employed in various studies with AIB virus, the organ of choice being chicken tracheal rings (Johnson, Newman and Wills, 1969; Colwell and Lukert, 1969; Cherry and TaylorRobinson, 1970; Butler, Ellaway and Hall, 1972). Gomez and Raggi (1974) used such cultures to assess their capacity for local resistance to infection with AIB virus in birds which had been immunized previously with homologous virus, During the course of that work, the rate of virus release over a period of 96 hours was determined quantitatively following infection of the cultures with either a high or low dose of AIB virus. The present work describes studies on the single cycle growth kinetics of AIB virus in organ cultures of chicken tracheal rings together with parallel comparative studies using embryonated chicken eggs and chick kidney (CK) cultures.