Characterization of a naturally occurring ecotropic receptor that does not facilitate entry of all ecotropic murine retroviruses.

A fibroblast cell line (MDTF) derived from the feral mouse Mus dunni is resistant to infection by Moloney murine leukemia virus (Mo-MuLV), an ecotropic murine leukemia virus (E-MuLV) (M. R. Lander and S. K. Chattopadadhyay, J. Virol. 52:695-698, 1984). MDTF cells can be infected by other E-MuLVs such as Friend MuLV and Rauscher MuLV, which have been demonstrated to use the same receptor as Mo-MuLV in NIH 3T3 cells (A. Rein and A. Schultz, Virology 136:144-152, 1984). We have now shown that the block to Mo-MuLV infection of MDTF cells occurs at the level of the envelope-receptor interaction. We have cloned the ecotropic receptor cDNA from MDTF cells (dRec) and compared its sequence with that of the NIH 3T3 cell receptor (mRec). Although the deduced dRec and mRec proteins differ at only four amino acid residues, we demonstrate that these changes account for the resistance of MDTF cells to Mo-MuLV infection. Our findings suggest that retroviruses in the same receptor class can exhibit different host ranges due to single amino acid differences in their cellular receptor.