📄 The OC43 human coronavirus envelope protein is critical for infectious virus production and propagation in neuronal cells and is a determinant of neurovirulence and CNS pathology

© 2017 Elsevier Inc. The OC43 strain of human coronavirus (HCoV-OC43) is an ubiquitous respiratory tract pathogen possessing neurotropic capacities. Coronavirus structural envelope (E) protein possesses specific motifs involved in protein-protein interaction or in homo-oligomeric ion channel formation, which are known to play various roles including in virion morphology/assembly and in cell response to infection and/or virulence. Making use of recombinant viruses either devoid of the E protein or harboring mutations either in putative transmembrane domain or PDZ-binding motif, we demonstrated that a fully functional HCoV-OC43 E protein is first needed for optimal production of recombinant infectious viruses. Furthermore, HCoV-OC43 infection of human epithelial and neuronal cell lines, of mixed murine primary cultures from the central nervous system and of mouse central nervous system showed that the E protein is critical for efficient and optimal virus replication and propagation, and thereby for neurovirulence.

keywords 🔗 recombinant viruses (43) 🔗 nervous system (116) 🔗 cell lines (125) 🔗 infectious virus (88) 🔗 human coronavirus (623) 🔗 virus replication (219) 🔗 transmembrane domain (51) 🔗 central nervous (112) 🔗 respiratory tract (344) 🔗 cell line (211)

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