Mouse LSECtin as a model for a human Ebola virus receptor

Pipirou, Zoi; Powlesland, Alex S; Steffen, Imke; Pöhlmann, Stefan; Taylor, Maureen E; Drickamer, Kurt

LSECtin is one of a group of glycan-binding receptors encoded near the end of human chromosome 19 (Liu et al. 2004) . Other receptors in the cluster include the dendritic and endothelial cell receptors dendritic cell-intercellular adhesion molecule 1 grabbing nonintegrin (DC-SIGN) and DC-SIGN related receptor (DC-SIGNR) (L-SIGN) and the structurally related Fc-binding receptor CD23 (Soilleux et al. 2000) . All of these receptors contain C-type carbohydrate-recognition domains (CRDs). Although a related cluster is found in the syntenic region of chromosome 8 in mouse, there are major differences in the organization of several of the genes, with eight mouse DC-SIGN-related genes replacing the two human genes (Powlesland et al. 2006 ). These differences make it difficult to identify clear mouse-human orthologs. In contrast, the human and mouse LSECtin genes appear to be much more closely related, although the two sequences differ at key residues that have been proposed to be involved in selective binding of ligands (Powlesland et al. 2008; Tang et al. 2009 ).