The rabies virus glycoprotein receptor p75NTR is not essential for rabies virus infection

Rabies virus glycoprotein (RVG) is known to be the only factor that mediates rabies infection. The neurotrophin receptor (p75(NTR)), through its cysteine-rich domain 1, is a specific receptor for RVG and neutralizes virus infectivity, but its role in virus infection has remained obscure. We used adult mouse dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons as a model to study the role of p75(NTR) in RV infection of primary neurons. We show that RV infects around 20% of DRG neurons, of which more than 80% are p75(NTR) positive, have large diameters, and are capsaicin insensitive. Surprisingly, RV binding and infection are absent in about half of the p75(NTR)-expressing DRG neurons which have small diameters and are often capsaicin sensitive. This indicates that p75(NTR) is not sufficient to mediate RV interaction in sensory neurons. The rate and specificity of neural infection are unchanged in RV-infected p75(NTRExonIV-/-) mice that lack all extracellular receptor domains and in wild-type mice infected with two independent RV mutants that lack p75(NTR) binding. Accordingly, the mortality rate is unchanged in the absence of RV-p75(NTR) interaction. We conclude that although p75(NTR) is a receptor for soluble RVG in transfected cells of heterologous expression systems, an RVG-p75(NTR) interaction is not necessary for RV infection of primary neurons. This means that other receptors are required to mediate RV infection in vivo and in vitro.