Guorong Sun, Kai Alexander Kropp, Marieluise Kirchner, Nina Plückebaum, Anton Selich, Manutea Serrero, Akshay Dhingra, Jorge Rubén Cabrera, Birgit Ritter, Rudolf Bauerfeind, Emanuel Wyler, Markus Landthaler, Axel Schambach, Beate Sodeik, Philipp Mertins, Abel Viejo-Borbolla
The highly prevalent herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) causes a range of diseases, including cold sores, blinding keratitis, and life-threatening encephalitis. HSV-1 initially replicates in epithelial cells, enters the peripheral nervous system via neurites, and establishes lifelong infection in the neuronal cell bodies. Neurites are highly dynamic structures that grow or retract in response to attractive or repulsive cues, respectively. Here, we show that infection with HSV-1, but not with a mutant virus lacking glycoprotein G (gG), reduced the repulsive effect of epithelial cells on neurite outgrowth and facilitated HSV-1 invasion of neurons...
January 26, 2024: MBio