Heat shock protein 90ß in the Vero cell membrane binds Japanese encephalitis virus

Wang, Yuan; Li, Yan; Ding, Tianbing

To summarise, we discovered that HSP90β in Vero cell membranes bound JEV on the cell surface, and the HSP90β-JEV binding as well as virus progeny were inhibited by anti-human HSP90β mAb and siRNA. This is in contrast to the aforementioned reports, which indicate that HSP70 family members are putative JEVR, HSP70 and its counterparts do not react to JEV in Vero cells. Furthermore, JEV seemed to prefer binding larger HSPs from HSC70 in mosquito cells to HSP90 in primate cells. In other words, these high molecular weight HSPs preserve the conservative conformation that distinctly fits JEV, and shifts from HSC70, HSP70 and then to HSP90 over millions years of evolution. To better support this presumption, more information pertaining JEV binding molecules on human susceptible cells is necessarily needed.