Persistent, triple-virus co-infections in mosquito cells

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>It is known that insects and crustaceans can carry simultaneous, active infections of two or more viruses without showing signs of disease, but it was not clear whether co-infecting viruses occupied the same cells or different cells in common target tissues. Our previous work showed that successive challenge of mosquito cell cultures followed by serial, split-passage resulted in stabilized cultures with 100% of the cells co-infected with Dengue virus (DEN) and an insect parvovirus (densovirus) (DNV). By addition of Japanese encephalitis virus (JE), we tested our hypothesis that stable, persistent, triple-virus co-infections could be obtained by the same process.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Using immunocytochemistry by confocal microscopy, we found that JE super-challenge of cells dually infected with DEN and DNV resulted in stable cultures without signs of cytopathology, and with 99% of the cells producing antigens of the 3 viruses. Location of antigens for all 3 viruses in the triple co-infections was dominant in the cell nuclei. Except for DNV, this differed from the distribution in cells persistently infected with the individual viruses or co-infected with DNV and DEN. The dependence of viral antigen distribution on single infection or co-infection status suggested that host cells underwent an adaptive process to accommodate 2 or more viruses.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Individual mosquito cells can accommodate at least 3 viruses simultaneously in an adaptive manner. The phenomenon provides an opportunity for genetic exchange between diverse viruses and it may have important medical and veterinary implications for arboviruses.</p

Secreted NS1 of Dengue Virus Attaches to the Surface of Cells via Interactions with Heparan Sulfate and Chondroitin Sulfate E

Dengue virus (DENV) nonstructural protein-1 (NS1) is a secreted glycoprotein that is absent from viral particles but accumulates in the supernatant and on the plasma membrane of cells during infection. Immune recognition of cell surface NS1 on endothelial cells has been hypothesized as a mechanism for the vascular leakage that occurs during severe DENV infection. However, it has remained unclear how NS1 becomes associated with the plasma membrane, as it contains no membrane-spanning sequence motif. Using flow cytometric and ELISA-based binding assays and mutant cell lines lacking selective glycosaminoglycans, we show that soluble NS1 binds back to the surface of uninfected cells primarily via interactions with heparan sulfate and chondroitin sulfate E. DENV NS1 binds directly to the surface of many types of epithelial and mesenchymal cells yet attaches poorly to most peripheral blood cells. Moreover, DENV NS1 preferentially binds to cultured human microvascular compared to aortic or umbilical cord vein endothelial cells. This binding specificity was confirmed in situ as DENV NS1 bound to lung and liver but not intestine or brain endothelium of mouse tissues. Differential binding of soluble NS1 by tissue endothelium and subsequent recognition by anti-NS1 antibodies could contribute to the selective vascular leakage syndrome that occurs during severe secondary DENV infection

Smartphone multiplex microcapillary diagnostics using Cygnus: development and evaluation of rapid serotype-specific NS1 detection with dengue patient samples

Laboratory diagnosis of dengue virus (DENV) infection including DENV serotyping requires skilled labor and well-equipped settings. DENV NS1 lateral flow rapid test (LFT) provides simplicity but lacks ability to identify serotype. A simple, economical, point-of-care device for serotyping is still needed. We present a gravity driven, smartphone compatible, microfluidic device using microcapillary film (MCF) to perform multiplex serotype-specific immunoassay detection of dengue virus NS1. A novel device–termed Cygnus–with a stackable design allows analysis of 1 to 12 samples in parallel in 40 minutes. A sandwich enzyme immunoassay was developed to specifically detect NS1 of all four DENV serotypes in one 60-μl plasma sample. This test aims to bridge the gap between rapid LFT and laboratory microplate ELISAs in terms of sensitivity, usability, accessibility and speed. The Cygnus NS1 assay was evaluated with retrospective undiluted plasma samples from 205 DENV infected patients alongside 50 febrile illness negative controls. Against the gold standard RT-PCR, clinical sensitivity for Cygnus was 82% in overall (with 78, 78, 80 and 76% for DENV1-4, respectively), comparable to an in-house serotyping NS1 microplate ELISA (82% vs 83%) but superior to commercial NS1-LFT (82% vs 74%). Specificity of the Cygnus device was 86%, lower than that of NS1-microplate ELISA and NS1-LFT (100% and 98%, respectively). For Cygnus positive samples, identification of DENV serotypes DENV2-4 matched those by RT-PCR by 100%, but for DENV1 capillaries false positives were seen, suggesting an improved DENV1 capture antibody is needed to increase specificity. Overall performance of Cygnus showed substantial agreement to NS1-microplate ELISA (κ = 0.68, 95%CI 0.58–0.77) and NS1-LFT (κ = 0.71, 95%CI 0.63–0.80). Although further refinement for DENV-1 NS1 detection is needed, the advantages of multiplexing and rapid processing time, this Cygnus device could deliver point-of-care NS1 antigen testing including serotyping for timely DENV diagnosis for epidemic surveillance and outbreak prediction

Optimized high gradient magnetic separation for isolation of Plasmodium-infected red blood cells

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Highly purified infected red blood cells (irbc), or highly synchronized parasite cultures, are regularly required in malaria research. Conventional isolation and synchronization rely on density and osmotic fragility of irbc, respectively. High gradient magnetic separation (HGMS) offers an alternative based on intrinsic magnetic properties of irbc, avoiding exposure to chemicals and osmotic stress. Successful HGMS concentration in malaria research was previously reported using polymer coated columns, while HGMS depletion has not been described yet. This study presents a new approach to both HGMS concentration and depletion in malaria research, rendering polymer coating unnecessary.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A dipole magnet generating a strong homogenous field was custom assembled. Polypropylene syringes were fitted with one-way stopcocks and filled with stainless steel wool. Rbc from <it>Plasmodium falciparum </it>cultures were resuspended in density and viscosity optimized HGMS buffers and HGMS processed. Purification and depletion results were analysed by flow cytometer and light microscopy. Viability was evaluated by calculating the infection rate after re-culturing of isolates.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In HGMS concentration, purity of irbc isolates from asynchronous cultures consistently ranged from 94.8% to 98.4% (mean 95.7%). With further optimization, over 90% of isolated irbc contained segmented schizonts. Processing time was less than 45 min. Reinfection rates ranged from 21.0% to 56.4%. In HGMS depletion, results were comparable to treatment with sorbitol, as demonstrated by essentially identical development of cultures.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The novel HGMS concentration procedure achieves high purities of segmented stage irbc from standard asynchronous cultures, and is the first HGMS depletion alternative to sorbitol lysis. It represents a simple and highly efficient alternative to conventional irbc concentration and synchronization methods.</p

Germline bias dictates cross-serotype reactivity in a common dengue-virus-specific CD8(+) T cell response.

Adaptive immune responses protect against infection with dengue virus (DENV), yet cross-reactivity with distinct serotypes can precipitate life-threatening clinical disease. We found that clonotypes expressing the T cell antigen receptor (TCR) β-chain variable region 11 (TRBV11-2) were 'preferentially' activated and mobilized within immunodominant human-leukocyte-antigen-(HLA)-A*11:01-restricted CD8(+) T cell populations specific for variants of the nonstructural protein epitope NS3133 that characterize the serotypes DENV1, DENV3 and DENV4. In contrast, the NS3133-DENV2-specific repertoire was largely devoid of such TCRs. Structural analysis of a representative TRBV11-2(+) TCR demonstrated that cross-serotype reactivity was governed by unique interplay between the variable antigenic determinant and germline-encoded residues in the second β-chain complementarity-determining region (CDR2β). Extensive mutagenesis studies of three distinct TRBV11-2(+) TCRs further confirmed that antigen recognition was dependent on key contacts between the serotype-defined peptide and discrete residues in the CDR2β loop. Collectively, these data reveal an innate-like mode of epitope recognition with potential implications for the outcome of sequential exposure to heterologous DENVs

Comparison of penaeid shrimp and insect parvoviruses suggests that viral transfers may occur between two distantly related arthropod groups

The DNA and putative amino acid sequences of representative insect and shrimp parvoviruses (subfamily Densovirinae) were analyzed using computer programs. Shrimp viruses included hepatopancreatic parvovirus (HPV) of Penaeus monodon (HPVmon) and P. chinensis (HPVchin), spawner-isolated mortality virus from P. monodon (SMVmon) and infectious hypodermal and hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHHNV) from P. vannamei. Insect viruses included Aedes aegypti densovirus (AaeDNV), Aedes albopictus densovirus (AalDNV), Junonia coenia densovirus (JcDNV), Galleria mellonella densovirus (GmDNV), Bombyx mori densovirus 5 (BmDNV), Diatraea saccharalis densovirus (DsDNV) and Periplaneta fuliginosa densovirus (PfDNV). Virion size for all these viruses ranged between 18 and 30 nm diameter and ssDNA genome length was between 4 and 6 kb. Using Image or Clustal W with the sequence fragments available, no significant DNA homology was found except for 77% DNA identity between HPVmon and HPVchin. However, phylogenetic trees constructed by comparing DNA genome sequences for putative viral polypeptides, capsid proteins and nonstructural proteins placed the parvoviruses into two Clades: Clade 1 with SMVmon, PfDNV, DsDNV, GmDNV, JcDNV, and BmDNV; and Clade 2 with HPVmon, HPVchin, IHHNV, AalDNV and AaeDNV. The four shrimp parvoviruses fell into two different clades that grouped with different insect parvoviruses

Feasibility of using 454 pyrosequencing for studying quasispecies of the whole dengue viral genome

Abstract Background Dengue is the world's most common mosquito-borne viral disease. Poor proofreading by RNA polymerase during its replication results in the accumulation of mutations in its genome. This leads to a diversity of genotypes in the viral population termed quasispecies. Quasispecies play an important role in disease severity. The study of quasispecies in dengue has been hindered because of the requirement for large amounts of cloning and sequencing, which could be overcome by 454 pyrosequencing. In this study, we attempted to demonstrate the feasibility of using 454 pyrosequencing to study genome diversity of dengue virus quasispecies by sequencing a pool of known dengue viral strains. Results Two sets of dengue DNA templates were sequenced by 454/Roche GS FLX. The total number of reads for data 1 and data 2 were 54,440 and 134,441, with average lengths of 221 and 232 bp, respectively. Reads containing ambiguous base Ns were excluded (6.00% in data 1, 7.05% in data 2). More than 99% of reads could be aligned back to the correct serotypes by BLAST. The reads covered the whole genome without any gaps, and the minimum coverage depth was 50×. Frequencies of known strains detected from each data set were highly correlated with the input ratios. We also explored criteria for filtering error reads and artifacts from true variations. Conclusions This study showed that 454 pyrosequencing, coupled with our analysis procedure, could sequence the whole genome of dengue virus with good coverage. The ratio of detected variants in the sequencing data reflected the starting ratio, proving that the proposed technique could be used to study the frequencies of variants in quasispecies.</p

Validation of genotype imputation in Southeast Asian populations and the effect of single nucleotide polymorphism annotation on imputation outcome

Abstract Background Imputation involves the inference of untyped single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in genome-wide association studies. The haplotypic reference of choice for imputation in Southeast Asian populations is unclear. Moreover, the influence of SNP annotation on imputation results has not been examined. Methods This study was divided into two parts. In the first part, we applied imputation to genotyped SNPs from Southeast Asian populations from the Pan-Asian SNP database. Five percent of the total SNPs were removed. The remaining SNPs were applied to imputation with IMPUTE2. The imputed outcomes were verified with the removed SNPs. We compared imputation references from Chinese and Japanese haplotypes from the HapMap phase II (HMII) and the complete set of haplotypes from the 1000 Genomes Project (1000G). The second part was imputation accuracy and yield in Thai patient dataset. Half of the autosomal SNPs was removed to create Set 1. Another dataset, Set 2, was then created where we switched which half of the SNPs were removed. Both Set 1 and Set 2 were imputed with HMII to create a complete imputed SNPs dataset. The dataset was used to validate association testing, SNPs annotation and imputation outcome. Results The accuracy was highest for all populations when using the HMII reference, but at the cost of a lower yield. Thai genotypes showed the highest accuracy over other populations in both HMII and 1000G panels, although accuracy and yield varied across chromosomes. Imputation was tested in a clinical dataset to compare accuracy in gene-related regions, and coding regions were found to have a higher accuracy and yield. Conclusions This work provides the first evidence of imputation reference selection for Southeast Asian studies and highlights the effects of SNP locations respective to genes on imputation outcome. Researchers will need to consider the trade-off between accuracy and yield in future imputation studies

Dengue - How Best to Classify It

Dengue has emerged as a major public health problem worldwide. Dengue virus infection causes a wide range of clinical manifestations. Since the 1970s, clinical dengue has been classified according to the World Health Organization guideline as dengue fever and dengue hemorrhagic fever. The classification has been criticized with regard to its usefulness and its applicability. In 2009, the World Health Organization issued a new guideline that classifies clinical dengue as dengue and severe dengue. The 2009 classification differs significantly from the previous classification in both conceptual and practical levels. The impacts of the new classification on clinical practice, dengue research, and public health policy are discussed. © 2011 The Author

Dengue--how best to classify it

Dengue has emerged as a major public health problem worldwide. Dengue virus infection causes a wide range of clinical manifestations. Since the 1970s, clinical dengue has been classified according to the World Health Organization guideline as dengue fever and dengue hemorrhagic fever. The classification has been criticized with regard to its usefulness and its applicability. In 2009, the World Health Organization issued a new guideline that classifies clinical dengue as dengue and severe dengue. The 2009 classification differs significantly from the previous classification in both conceptual and practical levels. The impacts of the new classification on clinical practice, dengue research, and public health policy are discussed