Decay-accelerating factor (DAF) functions as cell attachment receptor for a wide range of human enteroviruses. The Kuykendall prototype strain of coxsackievirus A21 (CVA21) attaches to DAF but requires interactions with intercellular cell adhesion molecule 1 (ICAM-1) to infect cells. We show here that a bioselected variant of CVA21 (CVA21-DAFv) generated by multiple passages in DAF-expressing, ICAM-1-negative rhabdomyosarcoma (RD) cells acquired the capacity to induce rapid and complete lysis of ICAM-1-deficient cells while retaining the capacity to bind ICAM-1. CVA21-DAFv binding to DAF on RD cells mediated lytic infection and was inhibited by either antibody blockade with a specific anti-DAF SCR1 monoclonal antibody (MAb) or soluble human DAF. Despite being bioselected in RD cells, CVA21-DAFv was able to lytically infect an additional ICAM-1-negative cancer cell line via DAF interactions alone. The finding that radiolabeled CVA21-DAFv virions are less readily eluted from surface-expressed DAF than are parental CVA21 virions during a competitive epitope challenge by an anti-DAF SCR1 MAb suggests that interactions between CVA21-DAFv and DAF are of higher affinity than those of the parental strain. Nucleotide sequence analysis of the capsid-coding region of the CVA21-DAFv revealed the presence of two amino acid substitutions in capsid protein VP3 (R96H and E101A), possibly conferring the enhanced DAF-binding phenotype of CVA21-DAFv. These residues are predicted to be embedded at the interface of VP1, VP2, and VP3 and are postulated to enhance the affinity of DAF interaction occurring outside the capsid canyon. Taken together, the data clearly demonstrate an enhanced DAF-using phenotype and expanded receptor utilization of CVA21-DAFv compared to the parental strain, further highlighting that capsid interactions with DAF alone facilitate rapid multicycle lytic cell infection.The attachment of viruses to cell surface molecules is the initial step of virus replication, and specific cellular virus receptors are therefore major determinants for virus tissue tropism. Decay-accelerating factor (DAF; CD55), a 70-kDa glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored complement-regulatory protein consisting of four extracellular short consensus repeats (SCRs) (25), serves as a membrane attachment protein for numerous human enteroviruses, including several echoviruses (EV) (4,20,36,48), coxsackie B viruses (CVB) (41) and coxsackievirus A21 (CVA21) (43). In general, viral binding to DAF alone is insufficient to permit enteroviral infections and interactions with DAF do not induce 135S altered (A) particles (34,35,39,43,45), which are considered to be a prerequisite for cell entry (2, 50). The physiological role of DAF for enteroviral infections is postulated to be that of a membrane concentration receptor that binds and clusters the infectious virus, resulting in increased opportunity for cell entry via interactions with a second functional cell entry receptor (30,43,45).As with many other picornaviruses (the polioviruses, the major-rece...