Effect of influenza virus infection on key metabolic enzyme activities in MDCK cells

Abstract

BackgroundInfluenza, or “flu”, is an upper respiratory tract infectioncaused by a virus belonging to the family ofOrthomyxo-viridae. Influenza can pose a serious risk to the health ofmainly the elderly, the very young, and to people suffer-ing from medical conditions (e.g. weak immune system).For example, seasonal influenza strains are fatal to morethan 50,000 people annually in the United States alone[1]. The most effective measure for preventing influenza-related morbidity and mortality is annual vaccination.Seasonal influenza vaccines are almost exclusively pro-duced using the traditional egg-based manufacturing pro-cess. However, the main limitation of egg-basedtechnology (especially in the case of a pandemic) is thetime-consuming production process (~6 months).Furthermore, people with serious egg allergy cannot bevaccinated when trace amounts of egg protein remain inthe final formulation. Therefore, new production pro-cesses using continuous cell lines for influenza vaccinemanufacturing are currently being established [2].Influenza viruses take advantage of the host cell meta-bolism to replicate their genetic material and to synthe-size viral proteins. The influenza virus particle consistsof three major parts: the ribonucleocapsid, the matrixprotein M1, and the envelope, which is derived from theplasma membrane of the host cell. The lipid bilayer con-tains the ion channel protein M2 and the immunogenicglycoproteins hemagglutinin and neuraminidase [3]. Thereplication cycle of influenza viruses including entry,uncoating, genome transcription and replication, assem-bly and release has been studied extensively with type Astrains [4]. So far, only few studies have characterizedthe influence of influenza infection on the centralcarbon metabolism of host cells [5]. Madin-Darbycanine kidney (MDCK) cells are considered a suitablesubstrate for cell culture-based influenza vaccine manu-facturing [2,6]. In this study, key metabolic enzymeactivities were analyzed in MDCK cells infected with aninfluenza A virus strain to improve our understandingof virus-host cell interaction and cell response.Materials and methodsAll chemicals and enzymes were purchased from Sigma(Taufkirchen, Germany) or Roche (Mannheim, Ger-many). Adherent MDCK cells obtained from theECACC (No. 84121903) were routinely cultured in 6-well plates containing 4 mL of GMEM-based medium(2 mM glutamine, 30 mM glucose, 10 % (v/v) fetal calfserum, 2 g/L peptone, 48 mM NaHCO