Early steps in FMDV replication: further analysis on the effects of chloroquine

We have previously demonstrated that chloroquine and NH4Cl, two well-known lysosomotropic drugs inhibit foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) replication. This fact points to the relevance of an acidic environment during FMDV penetration. In the present report, we show that chloroquine prevents the cell-mediated disruption of 140 S virions into 12 S particles. This dissociation, which resembles that caused by low pH in vitro, might be an initial uncoating step. Furthermore, we demonstrated that a decrease in the environmental pH counteracts the effect of chloroquine indicating that viral disruption is a low-pH cell-mediated process. The fact that it still occurs at low temperature (20 degrees) and shortly after viral adsorption suggests not only that prelysosomal vesicles represent the putative site for uncoating but also cause the virion to uncoat.