📄 Wild-type and innate immune-deficient mice are not susceptible to the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus

The Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) is a newly emerging highly pathogenic virus causing almost 50% lethality in infected individuals. The development of a smallanimal model is critical for the understanding of this virus and to aid in development of countermeasures against MERS-CoV. We found that BALB/c, 129/Sv. Ev and 129/Sv. Ev STAT1 knockout mice are not permissive to MERS-CoV infection. The lack of infection may be due to the low level of mRNA and protein for the MERS-CoV receptor, dipeptidyl peptidase 4 (DPP4), in the lungs of mice. The low level of DPP4 in the lungs likely contributes to the lack of viral replication in these mouse models and suggests that a transgenic mouse model expressing DPP4 to higher levels is necessary to create a mouse model for MERS-CoV. © 2014 SGM.

keywords 🔗 syndrome coronavirus (1074) 🔗 highly pathogenic (100) 🔗 dipeptidyl peptidase (47) 🔗 respiratory syndrome (2004) 🔗 viral replication (258)

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