Factors influencing the interaction of herpes simplex virus glycoprotein C with the third component of complement.

The factors influencing the interaction of herpes simplex virus (HSV) glycoprotein C (gC) with the third component of complement (C3) were investigated in this study. The ability of gC of HSV type 1 (gC-1) to bind to the C3b fragment of C3 was found to be influenced by cell specific processing of gC-1 in a different manner, binding being remarkably enhanced in some cell lines following removal of sialic acid residues. Testing several intertypic recombinants of HSV we found that only strains expressing gC-1 exhibited binding to C3b, even though their genome consisted mainly of HSV-2 sequences in some recombinants. Expression of type-2 glycoproteins gB, gD, gE, gG, gH, and gI did not alter th…