Protocadherin-1 is essential for cell entry by New World hantaviruses

Rohit Jangra (1) , Andrew Herbert (2) , Rong Li (3) , Lucas Jae (4) , Lara Kleinfelter (1) , Megan Slough (1) , Sarah Barker (5) , Pablo Guardado-Calvo (6) , Gleyder Román-Sosa (6) , M Eugenia Dieterle (1) , Ana Kuehne (2) , Nicolás Muena (7) , Ariel Wirchnianski (2) , Elisabeth Nyakatura (1) , J Maximilian Fels (1) , Melinda Ng (1) , Eva Mittler (1) , James Pan (5) , Sushma Bharrhan (1) , Anna Wec (1) , Jonathan Lai (1) , Sachdev Sidhu (5) , Nicole Tischler (7) , Félix Rey (6) , Jason Moffat (5, 1) , Thijn Brummelkamp (4, 8, 9) , Zhongde Wang (3) , John Dye (2) , Kartik Chandran (1)

1 Albert Einstein College of Medicine [New York]
2 USAMRIID - U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases
3 USU - Utah State University
4 NKI - Netherlands Cancer Institute
5 Donnelly Centre [Toronto, ON, Canada]
6 Virologie Structurale - Structural Virology
7 Fundación Ciencia & Vida
8 CeMM - Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences [Vienna, Austria]
9 The Cancer Genomics Center [Rotterdam, Pays-Bas]

The zoonotic transmission of hantaviruses from their rodent hosts to humans in North and South America is associated with a severe and frequently fatal respiratory disease, hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS)1,2. No specific antiviral treatments for HPS are available, and no molecular determinants of in vivo susceptibility to hantavirus infection and HPS are known. Here we identify the human asthma-associated gene protocadherin-1 (PCDH1)3-6 as an essential determinant of entry and infection in pulmonary endothelial cells by two hantaviruses that cause HPS, Andes virus (ANDV) and Sin Nombre virus (SNV). In vitro, we show that the surface glycoproteins of ANDV and SNV directly recognize the outermost extracellular repeat domain of PCDH1-a member of the cadherin superfamily7,8-to exploit PCDH1 for entry. In vivo, genetic ablation of PCDH1 renders Syrian golden hamsters highly resistant to a usually lethal ANDV challenge. Targeting PCDH1 could provide strategies to reduce infection and disease caused by New World hantaviruses.

Domains: Structural Biology [q-bio.BM]

Rohit Jangra, Andrew Herbert, Rong Li, Lucas Jae, Lara Kleinfelter, et al.. Protocadherin-1 is essential for cell entry by New World hantaviruses. Nature, 2018, 563 (7732), pp.559-563. ⟨10.1038/s41586-018-0702-1⟩. ⟨pasteur-03207979⟩