Distinct Roles for Sialoside and Protein Receptors in Coronavirus Infection

Qing, Enya; Hantak, Michael; Perlman, Stanley; Gallagher, Tom

Virus-like particles. CoV virus-like particles (VLPs) were constructed by cotransfection with equimolar amounts of plasmids encoding CoV S, E (envelope), M (matrix), and N (nucleocapsid). Coding sequences for A59-CoV S, E, M, and N genes are presented in GenBank accession no. AY910861.1; for JHM-CoV, GenBank accession no. AC_000192.1; and for MERS-CoV (EMC 2012 strain [84] , GenBank accession no. JX869059.2, where only the S gene is codon optimized [24] ). The A59/JHM-CoV and the MERS-CoV genes were inserted into pCAGGS and pcDNA3.1 expression vector plasmids, respectively. Recombinant pCAGGS-DSP 1-7 -N and pCAGGS-DSP [8] [9] [10] [11] -N were constructed by fusing the DSP 1-7 or DSP [8] [9] [10] [11] coding sequences (pDSP 1-7 and pDSP [8] [9] [10] [11] [85, 86] provided by Zene Matsuda [University of Tokyo]), followed by a 2Ï« SGGS linker, to the 5= ends of the coding sequences for the N genes.