Kinetics of antibody-induced modulation of respiratory syncytial virus antigens in a human epithelial cell line.docVIP

Virology Journal BioMedCentral Research Open Access Kinetics of antibody-induced modulation of respiratory syncytial virus antigens in a human epithelial cell line Rosa E Sarmiento, Rocio G Tirado, Laura E Valverde and Beatriz Gómez- Garcia* Address: Departamento de Microbiología y Parasitología, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad Universitaria, D.F., México Email: Rosa E Sarmiento - rosass@servidor.unam.mx; Rocio G Tirado - tiradom@; Laura E Valverde - chanteval@; Beatriz Gómez-Garcia* - begomez@servidor.unam.mx * Corresponding author Published: 3 July 2007 Received: 2 March 2007 Accepted: 3 July 2007 Virology Journal 2007, 4:68 doi:10.1186/1743-422X-4-68 This article is available from: /content/4/1/68 ? 2007 Sarmiento et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: The binding of viral-specific antibodies to cell-surface antigens usually results in down modulation of the antigen through redistribution of antigens into patches that subsequently may be internalized by endocytosis or may form caps that can be expelled to the extracellular space. Here, by use of confocal-laser-scanning microscopy we investigated the kinetics of the modulation of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) antigen by RSV-specific IgG. RSV-infected human epithelial cells (HEp-2) were incubated with anti-RSV polyclonal IgG and, at various incubation times, the RSV-cell-surface-antigen-antibody complexes (RSV Ag-Abs) and intracellular viral proteins were detected by indirect immunoflourescence. Results: Interaction of anti-RSV polyclonal IgG with RSV HEp-2 infected cells induced relocalization and aggregation of viral gly