Luxury at a cost? Recombinant mouse hepatitis viruses expressing the accessory hemagglutinin esterase protein display reduced fitness in vitro.

ABSTRACT: Group 2 coronaviruses encode an accessory envelope glycoprotein species, the hemagglutinin esterase (HE), which possesses sialate-O-acetylesterase activity and which, presumably, promotes virus spread and entry in vivo by facilitating reversible virion attachment to O-acetylated sialic acids. While HE may provide a strong selective advantage during natural infection, many laboratory strains of mouse hepatitis virus (MHV) fail to produce the protein. Apparently, their HE genes were inactivated during cell culture adaptation. For this report, we have studied the molecular basis of this phenomenon. By using targeted RNA recombination, we generated isogenic recombinant MHVs which differ exclusively in their expression of HE and produce either the wild-type protein (HE+), an enzymatically inact

SUBMITTER: Lissenberg A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1316008 | biostudies-literature | 2005 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature