Nipah and Hendra viral glycoproteins induce comparable homologous but distinct heterologous fusion phenotypes.

Nipah and Hendra viruses (NiV and HeV) exhibit high lethality in humans and are BSL-4 paramyxoviruses in the growing genus, Henipavirus. The attachment (G) and fusion (F) envelope glycoproteins are both required for viral entry into cells and for cell-cell fusion, pathognomonic of henipaviral infections. Here we compared the fusogenic capacities between homologous and heterologous pairs of NiV and HeV glycoproteins. Importantly, to accurately measure their fusogenic capacities, as these depend on glycoprotein cell surface expression (CSE) levels, we inserted identical extracellular tags to both fusion (FLAG tags) or both attachment (HA tags) glycoproteins. Importantly, these tags were placed in extracellular sites where they did not affect glycoprotein expression or function. NiV and HeV glycoproteins induced comparable levels of homologous HEK293T cell-cell fusion. Surprisingly however, while the heterologous NiV F/HeV G (NF/HG) combination yielded a hypofusogenic phenotype, the heterologous HeV F/NiV G (HF/NG) combination yielded a hyperfusogenic phenotype. Pseudotyped viral entry levels primarily corroborated the fusogenic phenotypes of the glycoprotein pairs analyzed. Furthermore, we constructed G and F chimeras that allowed us to map the overall regions in G and F that contributed to these hyperfusogenic or hypofusogenic phenotypes. Importantly, the fusogenic phenotypes of the glycoprotein combinations negatively correlated with the avidities of F/G interactions, supporting the F/G dissociation model of henipaviral-induced membrane fusion, even in the context of heterologous glycoprotein pairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]