Expression of dengue virus and Zika virus NS2B-NS3pro constructs alter cellular fatty acids, but co-expression with a Zika virus virus-like particle is detrimental to virus-like particle expression

ObjectiveStudies have shown that Flavivirus infection remodels the host cell to favour viral replication. In particular, the host cell lipid profile is altered, and it has been proposed that this process alters membrane fluidity to allow wrapping of the outer structural proteins around the viral nucleocapsid. We investigated whether expression of the Zika virus (ZIKV) and dengue virus (DENV) protease induced alterations in the cellular lipid profile, and subsequently whether co-expression of these proteases with VLP constructs was able to improve VLP yield.ResultsOur results showed that both ZIKV and DENV proteases induced alterations in the lipid profile, but that both active and inactive proteases induced many of the same changes. Neither co-transfection of protease and VLP constructs nor bicistronic vectors allowing expression of both protease and VLP separated by a cell cleavable linker improved VLP yield, and indeed many of the constructs showed significantly reduced VLP production. Further work in developing improved VLP expression platforms is required.