Abstract:
The dengue virus, the cause of dengue fever, dengue shock syndrome and dengue hemorrhagic fever, infects susceptible cells by binding to receptor(s) located on the host cell surface. To date, the identity of the dengue virus host cell receptor remains unclear, especially in liver cells, one of the major target organs of dengue virus infection. This study aimed to investigate the interaction between liver cells and the four dengue virus serotypes, and in particular to identify dengue virus serotype 1 (DEN-1) binding proteins on the surface of human hepatocyte (HepG2) cells. Results revealed that the HepG2 cell line is permissive to infection by the four serotypes of the dengue virus, but with various productivities. DEN-4 gave the highest viral production which corresponded to the shortest time taken for viral synthesis (12 h) and the maximum ability of retaining viral infectivity (infectious halflive: 3 h). Whereas the remaining three serotypes showed relatively similar profiles with 17-18 h for viral synthesis and infectious half-lives of 0.853, 1.389, 1.435 h for DEN-1, 2, and 3, respectively. Enzymatic removal of HepG2 cell surface molecules prior to infection showed that a trypsin-sensitive protein is involved in DEN-1, 2, and 4 infections but not serotype 3, whilst glycosaminoglycans were found to be involved in the infection of all four serotypes. The infectivity of DEN-1 to pre-trypsinized HepG2 cells was decreased about 50% and more than 90% to the cells that lack neither membrane proteins nor extracellular glycosaminoglycan. By using a viral overlay protein binding assay, in both non-denaturing and denaturing gel systems, and a tandem mass spectrometry analysis (MS/MS), this study identified a putative DEN-1 binding protein as the 37/67kDa high affinity laminin receptor. Confirmatory evidence was
provided by the ability of the 37/67kDa laminin receptor antibody and soluble laminin to block DEN-1 infectivity in a dose dependent manner (while there was no effect on the infectivity of other three serotypes) and the down-regulation of the 37/67kDa laminin receptor upon DEN-1 infection. These findings suggest that the 37/67kDa laminin receptor including glycosaminnoglycans should be investigated further for the use in the therapeutics of dengue virus infection.