Development and characterization of an inducible assay system to measure Zika virus capsid interactions

The global spread of the mosquito-borne Zika virus (ZIKV) infection and its complications including Guillain-Barré syndrome and fetus microcephaly in 2015 have made ZIKV as a significant public health threat. The capsid protein plays crucial roles in ZIKV replication and thus represents an attractive therapeutic target. However, inhibitors of ZIKV capsid assembly have not been rigorously identified due to the lack of a target-based screening system. In this study, we developed a novel ZIKV capsid interaction method based on a split-luciferase complementation assay, which can be used to measure and quantify ZIKV capsid–capsid (C–C) interaction by the restored luciferase signal when capsid proteins interact with each other. Furthermore, a Tet-on inducible stable cell line was generated to screen inhibitors of capsid dimerization. By using of this system, peptides (Pep.15-24 in the N-terminal region of ZIKV capsid protein and Pep.44-58 in the α2 helix of ZIKV capsid protein) were identified to inhibit ZIKV C–C interaction. Overall, this study developed a novel inducible assay system to measure ZIKV capsid interaction and identify ZIKV capsid multimerization inhibitors, which will be applied for future discovery of ZIKV assembly inhibitors.