The SARS Coronavirus E Protein Interacts with PALS1 and Alters Tight Junction Formation and Epithelial Morphogenesis

Teoh, Kim-Tat; Siu, Yu-Lam; Chan, Wing-Lim; Schlüter, Marc A.; Liu, Chia-Jen; Peiris, J. S. Malik; Bruzzone, Roberto; Margolis, Benjamin; Nal, Béatrice

To investigate the functional consequences of E expression on epithelial cell morphogenesis, we chose to use the MDCKII cysts model, which has been widely used to establish molecular and cellular mechanisms that regulate epithelial polarity and morphogenesis (O'Brien et al., 2001; Straight et al., 2004; Shin et al., 2005; Horikoshi et al., 2009; Schlüter et al., 2009). To this end, we first generated MDCKII stable cell lines ectopically expressing both eGFP-PALS1 and HA-E (wt) or HA-E (ΔPBM). In addition, two control cell lines, MDCKII eGFP-PALS1 and MDCKII eGFP-PALS1, HcRed were included.