Contribution of disulfide bridging to epitope expression of the dengue type 2 virus envelope glycoprotein

The individual contributions of each of the six conserved disulfide (SS) bonds in the dengue 2 virus envelope (E) glycoprotein (strain 16681) to epitope expression was determined by measuring the reactivities of a panel of well-defined monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) with LLC-MK(2) cells that had been transiently transformed with plasmid vectors expressing E proteins that were mutant in their SS bonds. Three domain I (DI) epitopes (C1, C3, and C4) were affected by elimination of any SS bond and were essentially the only epitopes affected by elimination of the amino-proximal SS1 formed between Cys 3 and Cys 30. The remaining DI epitope (C2) was sensitive to only SS3-bond (Cys 74-Cys 105) and SS6-bond (Cys 302-Cys 333) elimination. Of the four DII epitopes examined, reactivities of three anti-epitope MAbs (A1, A2, and A5) were reduced by elimination of SS2 (Cys 61-Cys 121), SS3, SS4 (Cys 94-Cys 116), SS5 (Cys 185-Cys 285), or SS6. The other DII epitope examined (A3) was sensitive only to SS2- and SS3-bond elimination. The three DIII epitopes tested (B2, B3, and B4) were most sensitive to elimination of SS6. The flavivirus group epitope (A1) was less sensitive to elimination of SS3 and SS6. This result may indicate that the region proximal to the E-protein fusion motif (amino acids 98 to 110) may have important linear components. If this observation can be confirmed, peptide mimics from this region of E protein might be able to interfere with flavivirus replication.