Critical Amino Acid Residues on Filovirus Glycoproteins

摘要：引起丝状病毒病毒感染的病毒蛋白是糖蛋白(GP)。我们计划使用丙氨酸扫描突变技术在马尔堡和埃博拉丝状病毒株的GP cDNA中引入突变。携带对照或突变丝状病毒糖蛋白(GP)的逆转录病毒假型将被用来评估这些突变对病毒趋向性和进入的影响。这项研究的目的是确定丝状病毒GP上的一个表位，该表位是促进病毒进入所必需的。鉴定这样的结构域可能会允许随后合理设计可以抑制丝状病毒感染的试剂。我们在2002年7月才收到启动该项目工作的试剂，因此现在提供任何结果的摘要还为时过早。

Summary: The viral protein responsible for initiating viral infection of filoviruses has been shown to be the glycoprotein (GP). We plan to use alanine-scanning mutagenesis to introduce mutations in the GP cDNAs for both the Marburg and Ebola strains of filovirus. Retroviral pseudotypes bearing control or mutated filovirus glycoproteins (GPs) will be used to assess the effect of these mutations on viral tropism and entry. The goal of this study is to identify an epitope on the filovirus GP that is necessary to facilitate viral entry. Identification of such a domain may then allow for subsequent rational design of agents that may inhibit filovirus infection. We only received the reagents to initiate work on this project in July, 2002, so it is too early to provide a summary of any results at this time.