Present and future of reverse genetics of rotavirus

Rotavirus is the leading pathogen for acute gastroenteritis in mammals and birds. Although the reverse genetics system has been utilized in many viruses, the system using a helper virus was developed for rotavirus in 2006. As a step for antigenic analysis of VP4 antigen of rotavirus, we prepared an infectious rotavirus with a spike protein VP4 having an antigenic mosaic by substituting one of the cross-reactive neutralization epitopes of a simian strain SA-11 with the corresponding one of a human strain DS-1. The future improvement and application of the rotavirus reverse genetics were discussed in this review.