Illness and Diseases

Background Human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6) is a T-lymphtropic and neurotropic virus that can infect various types of cells. Sequential studies reported that apoptosis of glia and neurons induced by HHV-6 might act a potential trigger for some central nervous system (CNS) diseases. HHV-6 is involved in the pathogenesis of encephalitis, multiple sclerosis (MS) and fatigue […]

HTNV N-specific IgG antibodies in mice sera were determined, by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in [26,27]. 96-well microtiter plates (Costar, USA) coated with 100 μl of purified recombinant N protein of HTNV strain A9 at a concentration of 1 μg/ml as described previously. Hantaan virus glycoproteins specific IgG antibodies were evaluated by IFA using insect […]

The 293T, Vero E6 cells and Baby hamster kidney cell (BHK) cells were purchased from ATCC (ATCC number: CRL-1586) and cultured in Dulbecco modified Eagle medium (DMEM) supplemented with 10% heat-inactivated fetal calf serum, 100 U of penicillin, and 100 μg of streptomycin per ml at 37 with 5% CO2. HTNV strain 84Fli, isolated from […]

Background Hantaan virus (HTNV) is the causative agent of the most severe form of a rodent-borne disease known as hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS). A safe and effective HTNV vaccine is needed. Vaccination with DNA constructs expressing fused antigen with bioactive factors, has shown promising improvement of immunogenicity for viral agents in animal models, […]

Additional evidence supporting alphavirus entry via a pore at the plasma membrane was obtained using freeze-fracture (Kononchik, Vancini and Brown, Virology, in press). In these experiments, high MOI of SVHR was adsorbed onto mosquito cells for half an hour after which the virus was cross-linked to cell surface proteins with gluteraldehyde. These samples were then […]

There are numerous techniques that can be used to examine the interactions between the virus and the cell. These techniques can generally fall into two categories: direct and indirect observation. Direct observation uses familiar techniques such as thin-section microscopy, cryo-electron microscopy, tomography, and other less familiar techniques like freeze-fracture immunolabeling to examine virus-cell interactions. When […]

As arboviruses, alphaviruses infect insect and vertebrate hosts. Since alphaviruses need to infect cells which provide widely divergent biochemical and genetic environments, it is likely that they either use a ubiquitous receptor, or are able to use multiple proteins as a receptor. The receptor/s has not been identified. Many proteins and polysaccharides have been implicated […]

The current molecular model for how the virus transfers its RNA into the cell is hypothesized to be by low pH mediated membrane fusion, after endocytosis of the virus attached to its receptor. E2 contains the receptor binding sequence while E1 is known to contain the properties necessary for membrane fusion. It is predicted that […]

Alphaviruses are small 70 nm viruses that have 240 copies each of three structural proteins, E1, E2 and capsid (C) assembled in a 1:1:1 stoichiometry. These three proteins create two nested T = 4 icosahedral shells that sandwich a host derived lipid bilayer. The outer protein shell is composed of E1 and E2 heterodimers that […]

The study of alphavirus entry has been complicated by an inability to clearly identify a receptor and by experiments which only tangentially and indirectly examine the process, producing results that are difficult to interpret. The mechanism of entry has been widely accepted to be by endocytosis followed by acidification of the endosome resulting in virus […]