Seeing how deadly viruses invade cells, Chinese and American teams jointly bring new breakthroughs

In 1938, a special epidemic was staged in Venezuela and neighboring countries

▲Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (Image source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

, Public domain)

This virus not only infects horses

For a long time, humans' knowledge of alpha viruses including VEEV is extremely limited

At the end of last year, an important study on VEEV appeared

In the two "Nature" papers early this morning, two research teams from China and the United States went further.

One of the studies was completed by Xiang Ye's team from Tsinghua University and Zhang Xinzheng's team from the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In order to carry out experiments in a safe environment, the research team produced VEEV virus-like particles that have the same structure as VEEV but do not contain genetic material

▲The structure of LDLRAD3-D1 (picture source: reference [1])

The alphavirus including VEEV has 80 trimeric spike proteins on the surface, and each trimer contains 3 dimers composed of E1 and E2 (E1 and E2 are different types of viral envelope glycoproteins)

▲Schematic diagram of the combination of LDLRAD3-D1 and VEEV (picture source: reference [1])

In subsequent studies, the research team also found clues to change the ability of LDLRAD3-D1 to bind to the virus

In another study released at the same time, the Daved Fremont team of Washington University in St.

Among alphaviruses, only the receptor for VEEV is LDLRAD3, while the receptor for another representative alphavirus, Chikungunya virus, is MXRA8

Note: The original text has been deleted

Reference materials:

[1] (2021) Structure of Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus with its receptor LDLRAD3.

[2] (2021) Structural basis of Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus engagement of the LDLRAD3 receptor.