Incorporation of functional HN-F glycoprotein-containing complexes into newcastle disease virus is dependent on cholesterol and membrane lipid raft integrity.

Newcastle disease virus assembles in plasma membrane domains with properties of membrane lipid rafts, and disruption of these domains by cholesterol extraction with methyl-beta-cyclodextrin resulted in the release of virions with irregular protein composition, abnormal particle density, and reduced infectivity (J. P. Laliberte, L. W. McGinnes, M. E. Peeples, and T. G. Morrison, J. Virol. 80:10652-10662, 2006). In the present study, these results were confirmed using Niemann-Pick syndrome type C cells, which are deficient in normal membrane rafts due to mutations affecting cholesterol transport. Furthermore, cholesterol extraction of infected cells resulted in the release of virions that attached to target cells at normal levels but were defective in virus-cell membrane fusion. The reduced fusion capacity of particles released from cholesterol-extracted cells correlated with significant loss of HN-F glycoprotein-containing complexes detected in the virion envelopes of these particles and with detection of cell-associated HN-F protein-containing complexes in extracts of cholesterol-extracted cells. Extraction of cholesterol from purified virions had no effect on virus-cell attachment, virus-cell fusion, particle infectivity, or the levels of glycoprotein-containing complexes. Taken together, these results suggest that cholesterol and membrane rafts are required for the formation or maintenance of HN-F glycoprotein-containing complexes in cells but not the stability of preformed glycoprotein complexes once assembled into virions.