The results shown above ( Figure 5B ) also suggest that DI RNA replication is more sensitive to the inhibitory effects of the hnRNP A1 mutant. To con®rm this result, we further studied replication of another DI RNA during serial virus passages. DBT cells were infected with MHV-A59 and transfected with DIssE RNA derived from JHM virus (Makino and Lai, 1989) ; the virus released (P0) was passaged twice in DBT cells to generate P1 and P2 viruses. DBT cells were infected with these viruses, and cytoplasmic RNA was extracted for northern blot analysis using glyoxalated RNA for a better resolution of smaller RNAs. For DBT-A1DC cells, RNA was extracted at 36 h p.i. since viral RNA synthesis was delayed in this cell line. Cells infected with P0 viruses did not yield detectable amounts of DIssE, but contained the naturally occurring A59 DI RNA, whose replication was inhibited more strongly than the synthesis of MHV genomic and subgenomic RNAs in DBT-A1DC cells ( Figures 5B, lanes 8±10 and 6B, lanes 1± 3). However, this A59 DI RNA was not detectable in cells infected with P1 and P2 viruses ( Figure 6B , lanes 4±9). In contrast, DIssE appeared in cells infected with P1 viruses and further increased in cells infected with P2 viruses, indicating that the replication of the smaller DIssE may have an inhibitory effect on the replication of the larger A59 DI RNA (Jeong and Makino, 1992) . Similar to the A59 DI RNA, the replication of DIssE RNA was much more strongly inhibited than that of MHV genomic and subgenomic RNAs in DBT-A1DC cells ( Figure 6B , lanes 6 and 9). Our results thus suggest that MHV DI RNA replication is more dependent on the function of cytoplasmic hnRNP A1.