Morbillivirus Receptors and Tropism: Multiple Pathways for Infection

Sato, Hiroki; Yoneda, Misako; Honda, Tomoyuki; Kai, Chieko

Vero cells derived from the African green monkey kidney had been utilized to isolate MeV as a standard cell line because it is beneficial and safe. About 40 years after MeV was isolated, two groups reported in 1993 that CD46 acts as a cellular receptor for laboratory-adapted strains of MeV. Naniche et al. (1992) obtained a monoclonal antibody that inhibited cell fusion induced by recombinant vaccinia virus encoding the H and F proteins of the Halle strain of MeV. The antibody precipitated a cell-surface glycoprotein from human and simian cells but not from murine cells. N-terminal amino acid sequencing identified that the glycoprotein was human membrane cofactor protein (CD46), a member of the regulators of the complement activation gene cluster (Naniche et al., 1993) . Transfection of non-permissive murine cells with a CD46 expression vector confirmed that the human CD46 molecule serves as a MeV receptor, allowing virus-cell binding, fusion, and viral replication. Dorig et al. (1993) showed independently that hamster cell lines expressing CD46 produced syncytia and virus proteins after infection with the Edmonston strain of MeV and that polyclonal antisera against CD46 inhibited virus binding and infection.