Does MV infect epithelial cells?
Histopathological data from patients with measles and monkeys experimentally infected with MV have indicated that although lymphoid organs are the major targets of MV, MV antigens and syncytia typical of MV-infected cells are also present in epithelial tissues of various organs (for references, see ref. 12). Primary cultures of epithelial and endothelial cells have also been shown to be susceptible to MV infection to some extent (13, 14). However, the mechanism by which MV infects epithelial cells has remained unknown largely due to the lack of cell lines supporting MV infection independent of SLAM. In this issue of the JCI, Leonard et al. (3) have provided convincing evidence that MV has the ability to infect certain epithelial cell lines via a SLAM-independent mechanism. The authors demonstrated that three amino acid residues — leucine, proline, and tyrosine at amino acid positions 482, 497, and 543, respectively — in the H protein are critical for MV infection of epithelial cells bu
