Feline infectious peritonitis virus (FIPV), a coronavirus that causes a lethal chronic disease in cats, enters feline monocytes via endocytosis. In this study, the pathway of internalization is characterized by evaluating the effect of chemical inhibitors and/or expression of dominantnegative (DN) proteins on the percentage of internalized virions per cell and infection. Further, colocalization studies were performed to determine the involvement of certain cellular internalization proteins. FIPV is not internalized through a clathrin-mediated pathway, as chlorpromazine, amantadine and DN eps15 did not influence virus uptake and FIPV did not co-localize with clathrin. The caveolae-mediated pathway could be excluded based on the inability of genistein and DN caveolin-1 to inhibit virus uptake and lack of co-localization between FIPV and caveolin-1. Dynamin inhibitory peptide and DN dynamin effectively inhibited virus internalization. The inhibitor strongly reduced uptake to 20.3±1.1 % of uptake in untreated cells. In the presence of DN dynamin, uptake was 58.7±3.9 % relative to uptake in untransduced cells. Internalization of FIPV was slightly reduced to 85.0±1.4 and 87.4±6.1 % of internalization in control cells by the sterolbinding drugs nystatin and methyl-b-cyclodextrin, respectively. Rho GTPases were inhibited by Clostridium difficile toxin B, but no effect was observed. These results were confirmed with infection studies showing that infection was not influenced by chlorpromazine, amantadine and genistein, but was significantly reduced by dynamin inhibition and nystatin. In conclusion, these results indicate that FIPV enters monocytes through a clathrin-and caveolae-independent pathway that strongly depends on dynamin and is slightly sensitive to cholesterol depletion.
INTRODUCTIONViral entry occurs through a number of successive steps allowing the virus to bring its genome inside the cell. The virus either fuses with the host cell membrane or utilizes the endocytosis machinery of the cell. Endocytosis can be divided in two categories: phagocytosis of large cargo and pinocytosis of smaller cargo (Conner & Schmid, 2003). Phagocytosis is an active and highly regulated process involving specific cell surface receptors and signalling cascades mediated by Rho GTPases (Hall & Nobes, 2000;Conner & Schmid, 2003). Pinocytosis can occur through several pathways. The cargo and its receptor determine which pinocytic pathway will be used (Conner & Schmid, 2003). A first possible route for pinocytosis is 'macropinocytosis' (Swanson & Watts, 1995). Other pathways are named after the main structural compound involved: 'clathrin-mediated endocytosis ' (Brodsky et al., 2001) and 'caveolae-mediated endocytosis' (Pelkmans & Helenius, 2002). Finally, there is a group called 'clathrin-and caveolae-independent pathways'. They are differentiated based on their dependency on cholesterol and/or association with lipid rafts, dynamin and Rho GTPases (Nichols & Lippincott-Schwartz, 2001;Conner & Schmid, 2003). Viruses are specialized in...