Epizootic subtype IAB and IC Venezuelan equine encephalitis viruses (VEEV) readily infect the epizootic mosquito vector Aedes taeniorhynchus. The inability of enzootic subtype IE viruses to infect this mosquito species provides a model system for the identification of natural viral determinants of vector infectivity. To map mosquito infection determinants, reciprocal chimeric viruses generated ...

Cross-species viral transmission subjects parent and progeny alphaviruses to differential post-translational processing of viral envelope glycoproteins. Alphavirus biogenesis has been extensively studied, and the Semliki Forest virus E1 and E2 glycoproteins have been shown to exhibit differing degrees of processing of N-linked glycans. However the composition of these glycans, including that ar...

UNLABELLED Neutralizing antibodies (NAbs) targeting glycoprotein E2 are important for the control of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. One conserved antigenic site (amino acids 412 to 423) is disordered in the reported E2 structure, but a synthetic peptide mimicking this site forms a β-hairpin in complex with three independent NAbs. Our structure of the same peptide in complex with NAb 3/11 de...

A strategy for antiviral drug discovery is the elucidation and imitation of viral interference mechanisms. HIV-1 patients benefit from a coinfection with GB Virus C (GBV-C), since HIV-positive individuals with long-term GBV-C viraemia show better survival rates than HIV-1 patients without persisting GBV-C. A direct influence of GBV-C on HIV-1 replication has been shown in coinfection experiment...

Glycoprotein PE2 of Sindbis virus will form a heterodimer with glycoprotein E1 of Ross River virus that is cleaved to an E2/E1 heterodimer and transported to the cell plasma membrane, but this chimeric heterodimer fails to interact with Sindbis virus nucleocapsids, and very little budding to produce mature virus occurs upon infection with chimeric viruses. We have isolated in both Sindbis virus...

The antibody response to the envelope proteins of hepatitis C virus (HCV) may play an important role in controlling the infection. To allow molecular analyses of protective antibodies, we isolated human monoclonal antibodies to the E2 envelope glycoprotein of HCV from a combinatorial Fab library established from bone marrow of a chronically HCV-infected patient. Anti-E2 reactive clones were sel...

The second envelope glycoprotein (E2) of hepatitis C virus has been shown to bind human target cells and has become a major target for the development of anti-HCV vaccines. Anti-E2 antibodies have been suggested to be of clinical significance in diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of hepatitis C. However, large-scale expression and purification of E2 proteins in mammalian cells is difficult. As ...

The humoral response to hepatitis C virus (HCV) may contribute to controlling infection. We previously isolated human monoclonal antibodies to conformational epitopes on the HCV E2 glycoprotein. Here, we report on their ability to inhibit infection by retroviral pseudoparticles incorporating a panel of full-length E1E2 clones representing the full spectrum of genotypes 1-6. We identified one an...