Question about ownership of lentiviruses

[x11...@mail.com]

Are there any specific laws or regulations (in the United States) regarding the sale and individual ownership of replication incompetant lentiviruses? That is to say are there any laws in place that would bar an individual from purchasing and owning them?

[EJ]

There are very few actual laws about anything related to genetic engineering in the US, if you are not working with a "select agent" and are obviously working towards a useful and peaceful purpose. That said, there are lots of guidelines set forth by the NIH if you are receiving funding through them, and they are designed to maximize safety when handling viruses etc. An incompetent lentivirus is just another piece of DNA until you pair it with a helper virus that replicates. All the commercial lentiviral transfection systems contain both and are thus biosafety level 2, requiring a laminar flow hood and a negative pressure room. Seeing as how efficiently they transform mammalian cells, I would not want to work with them outside a BSL2 facility.

[x11...@mail.com]

I thought as much. Would be hard to regulate the possesion of lentiviruses since anyone afflicted by HIV or the like could be said to be 'in possesion' of one. Also just nitpicking but I thought lentiviruses used RNA, not DNA (maybe there are some that do?). And they consist of more than just RNA (protein sheath, reverse transcriptase, etc) even if they are replication incompetent (well to be fair I guess this depends on how they are made replication incompetent). Anyways many thanks.