Dengue Fever: Causes, Complications, and Vaccine Strategies

Figure 4

Schematic representation of the dengue virus entry process. The dengue virus makes use of membrane receptors and attachment factors on the cell plasma membrane (PM) to find its way to the cytoplasm. The mature virion either gets attached directly to a cellular membrane receptor (a) or uses several attachment factors (b) to finally trigger the endocytic, clathrin dependent pathway. The endocytic vesicle becomes a late endosome, where acidification triggers conformational changes on the E protein dimers to become fusogenic trimers. Finally, pores are formed and the genome of the virus is released into the cytoplasm.