Dengue Virus and Its Relation to Human Glycoprotein IIb/IIIa Revealed by Fluorescence Microscopy and Flow Cytometry.

Understanding dengue virus (DENV)-induced hemorrhage remains a challenging jigsaw puzzle with many pieces missing to understand the complex interactions between DENV and blood coagulation system. To use flow cytometry studying the interactions between DENV and human platelet aggregation receptor, glycoprotein IIb/IIIa (gpIIb/IIIa), directly conjugated fluorochrome monoclonal antibody (mAb) is essential to facilitate multifluorochrome immunostaining. However, the obstacle was that no directly conjugated fluorochrome-anti-DENV mAb had been commercially available. To overcome, we directly conjugated fluorochrome to a primary anti-DENV mAb using a LYNX rapid conjugation kit. Flow cytometry analysis showed that this conjugated antibody and anti-gpIIb/IIIa mAb were able to detect DENV and CD41a simultaneously. Fluorescence microscopy analysis further demonstrated CD41a superficially and DENV intracellularly. Potentially, this strategy can facilitate virologists for directly conjugating any virus-specific primary antibodies, which are not commercially available with fluorochrome, to study the infectivity in any surface marker-specific hosts through flow cytometry. Together, DENV can interact with both human gpIIb/IIIa- and gpIIb/IIIa+ cells revealed by flow cytometry and fluorescence microscopy for the first time.