Obtaining Retroviruses for Superior Transduction of Human Cells

Retroviruses are capable of highly efficient, stable transfection of human cells. In order to obtain stably transfected cell lines for our research, we needed to obtain retroviruses from an established producer cell line for Murine Leukemia Virus. While the producer cell line has all the elements necessary to produce structurally sound viruses, the gene encoding the envelope protein is not part of the producer cell line and needs to be transiently transfected with the appropriate envelope plasmid DNA during growth of the cells to produce these retroviruses.