Cell Adhesion Promotes Ebola Virus Envelope Glycoprotein-Mediated Binding and Infection

Department of Microbiology, University of Virginia, 1300 Jefferson Park Ave., Charlottesville, Virginia 22908-0734, USA; Department of Cell Biology, University of Virginia, 1300 Jefferson Park Ave., Charlottesville, Virginia 22908-0734, USA; Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Uniformed Services University, Bethesda, MD, 20814, USA

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: jw7g{at}virginia.edu.

	Abstract

Ebola virus infects a wide variety of adherent cell types while non-adherent cells are found to be refractory. To explore this correlation we compared the ability of pairs of related adherent and non-adherent cells to bind a recombinant Ebola virus receptor binding domain (EboV RBD) and to be infected with Ebola virus glycoprotein (GP) pseudotyped particles. Both human 293F and THP-1 cells can be propagated as adherent or non-adherent cultures, and in both cases adherent cells were found to be significantly more susceptible to both EboV RBD binding and GP-pseudotyped virus infection as compared to their non-adherent counterparts. Furthermore, with 293F cells the acquisition of EboV RBD binding paralleled cell spreading and did not require new mRNA or protein synthesis.