Mammarenaviral Infection Is Dependent on Directional Exposure to and Release from Polarized Intestinal Epithelia

Warner, Nikole L.; Jokinen, Jenny D.; Beier, Juliane I.; Sokoloski, Kevin J.; Lukashevich, Igor S.

To assess if the aforementioned OW arenaviruses differed in their capacity to attach/bind to intestinal epithelia, polarized Caco-2 cells were infected at an equal MOI (0.3 PFU/Cell), via the apical or basolateral surfaces. Cells were incubated at 4 • C for 1 h to allow virus to attach, but not penetrate the host cell. To determine the relative attachment rates of the viral particles, the total RNA was extracted from unwashed and washed tissue culture cells of at least three biological replicates derived from at least two independently generated viral stocks. The relative abundance of viral RNA was detected by qRT-PCR using virus-specific primers to determine the percent of input of virus particles that bound to the polarized Caco-2 cells.