Toxicity Of Ebola Virus Glycoprotein

Ebola virus is a non-segmented negative strand RNA virus in Filoviridae. It causes Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever, which manifests with high fever and bleeding tendency. Meanwhile, Ebola virus injures endothelial cells and increases vascular permeability. Currently, the glycoprotein (GP) of Ebola virus is considered to be responsible for the toxicity of the virus, which induces endothelial cell to detach from the vessel base and destroys their integrity. In the novo model our group established, exogenous GP1subunit from GP was tagged with Fc and the GP1-Fc was able to induce cell detachment. In order to investigate the cytotoxicity of GP1-Fc, series of GP1related mutant were constructed and expressed. In addition, biochemical study confirmed that GP1-Fc proteins existed as trimmers in solutions, which could simulate its natural status. Besides that, we also demonstrated that the detachment of293T cell induced by GP did not lead to cell death.