Forty-Five Years of Marburg Virus Research

Brauburger, Kristina; Hume, Adam J.; Mühlberger, Elke; Olejnik, Judith

While other reports have verified that cholesterol is important for live MARV particle uptake [172] , canonical caveolae-and clathrin-mediated mechanisms are unlikely to be the primary mechanism of MARV entry due to steric issues. The typical MARV particle size (average 790 nm) is much larger than canonical caveolae (50-100 nm) or clathrin-coated pits (up to 200 nm) whereas pseudotyped murine leukemia virus (MLV) (100 × 100 nm) and vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) (70 × 180 nm) are not [173] . These findings indicate that involvement of the caveolae-and clathrin-mediated endocytic pathways for virus entry may therefore be the result of the artificial nature of the pseudotyped virions and highlights the need to confirm such experiments with live MARV.