Abstract
The membrane fusion properties of HCV envelope glycoproteins can be evaluated using several assays. Fusion assays generally require contacts between glycoproteins expressed on a donor membrane, such as those from a cell or a viral particle, and an acceptor membrane that may or may not express cognate viral receptor, such as those from an indicator cell or a liposome. In this chapter, we describe three well-established methods in the field that use either cell surface expression of glycoproteins, HCV pseudoparticles (HCVpp), or cell culture-grown HCV (HCVcc) particles for donor membrane and cells or liposomes as acceptor membrane in which specific components can be included to monitor and quantify fusion. We provide details of cell-cell fusion assay, virus-liposome fusion assay, and finally virus-plasma membrane fusion assay. We also describe inhibitors that can block HCV envelope membrane fusion.
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Acknowledgment
Our work is supported by the French “Agence Nationale de la Recherche sur le SIDA et les hépatites virales” (ANRS), the European Research Council (ERC-2008-AdG-233130-HEPCENT), and the LabEx ECOFECT (ANR-11-LABX-0048).
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Denolly, S., Cosset, FL., Freitas, N. (2019). Membrane Fusion Assays for Studying Entry Hepatitis C Virus into Cells. In: Law, M. (eds) Hepatitis C Virus Protocols . Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1911. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-8976-8_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-8976-8_15
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