The mission of a viral particle is to transport its genome from an infected host cell to a non-infected host cell and to deliver it into the cytoplasm or the nucleus in a replication-competent form1. This process is initially triggered by binding to host cell receptors, followed by fusion of virion and cellular membranes. For enveloped viruses, like influenza viruses, the spike glycoproteins are responsible for receptor binding and fusion1,2. Viral envelope glycoproteins (e.g., pyrogens, antigens), are involved in many important properties and events, such as virus lifecycle initiation (binding and fusion), viral pathogenesis, immunogenicity, host cell apoptosis and cellular tropism, the cellular endocytic pathway, as well as interspecies transmission and reassortment1,3,4,5,6,7. Research on viral envelope glycoproteins will help us understand many aspects of the viral infection process. Pseudotyped viral particles (pp), also termed pseudovirions or pseudoparticles, can be generated through a pseudotyping technique8,9,10. This technology has been used to develop pseudotyped particles of many viruses, including hepatitis C11,12, hepatitis B13, vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV)14,15, and influenza virus16,17,18,19. This technology is based on the Gag-Pol protein of lentiviruses or other retroviruses.
Pseudotyped viral particles can be obtained using a three-plasmid system by cotransfecting a viral envelope glycoprotein expression plasmid, a retroviral packaging plasmid missing the envelope env gene, and a separate reporter plasmid into pp producer cells. The retrovirus is assembled by its Gag protein, and it buds from an infected cell membrane that expresses the virus envelope protein1. Therefore, it is possible to obtain high titer influenza pps using the retrovirus Gag protein to produce buds on a cellular membrane expressing influenza HA and NA. In our previous studies, HAs/NAs in all combinations were functional and able to perform their corresponding functions in the viral life cycle16,17,18,20,21. These pps are used to investigate influenza biological characteristics, including hemagglutination, neuraminidase activity, HA-receptor binding tropism, and infectivity. Because HA and NA are both important surface functional proteins in the viral life cycle, mismatched HAs and NAs derived from different strains of influenza can partly demonstrate reassortment between them. Here, we generate eight types of influenza pps by combining two HAs and two NAs (derived from the HPAI H5N1 strain and the H7N9 stain), using a three-plasmid pseudotyping system. These eight types of pps include two native pps, H5N1pp, H7N9pp; two mismatched pps, (H5+N9)pp, (H7+N1)pp; and four pps only harboring a single glycoprotein (HA or NA), H5pp, N1pp, H7pp, N9pp. Studies on the influenza virus, such as H5N1 and H7N9, are limited by biosafety requirements. All studies of the wild influenza virus strains should be performed in a biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) laboratory. Pseudotyped viral particle technology can be used to package an artificial virion in a biosafety level 2 (BSL-2) setting. Therefore, pps represent a safer and useful tool to study the influenza virus processes depending on its two major glycoproteins: hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA).
This protocol describes the generation of these pps with a three-plasmid cotransfection strategy (overviewed in Figure 1), how to quantify pps, and infectivity detection. The pp production involves three kinds of plasmids (Figure 1). The gag-pol gene, which encodes the retrovirus Gag-Pol protein, was cloned from a retrovirus packaging kit and inserted into the pcDNA 3.1 plasmid and named pcDNA-Gag-Pol. The enhanced green fluorescent protein (eGFP) gene, which encodes Green Fluorescent Protein, was cloned from pTRE-EGFP vector, inserted into the pcDNA 3.1 plasmid, and called pcDNA-GFP. During cloning, a packaging signal (ψ) sequence was added via a primer. The HA and NA genes were cloned into a pVRC plasmid, named pVRC-HA and pVRC-NA, respectively. The last plasmid encodes the fusion protein and can be replaced with any other fusion protein of interest. Our pseudotyping platform includes two glycoprotein expression plasmids: pVRC-HA and pVRC-NA. This can simplify the research on reassortment between different virus strains in a BSL-2 setting.