Figure 1

Topological arrangement of the flavivirus E stem-anchor region and its elements. The top panel (A) depicts the topology of part the polyprotein precursor (E-NS1) of YF virus, its insertion at the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) membrane, the expected proteolytic cleavage by the ER signal peptidase (blue arrow) and the flavivirus stem-anchor region with its different elements (H1 and H2; TM1 and TM2). The lower part of panel (A) illustrates the same region bearing the Enhanced Green Fluorescent Protein gene (EGFP). The EGFP protein is fused at its amino-terminus with nine amino acids of YF 17D NS1 protein and with the YF 17D E stem-anchor region at its carboxi-terminus. Blue arrows indicated ER signal peptidase cleavage sites Panel (B) presents the sequence alignment (Clustal W method) of the stem-anchor regions of flavivirus E proteins and the first nine amino acids of the NS1 protein amino-terminus (TBE; GenBank U27495; YF; GenBank U17066; JE; GenBank M18370; Den 2; GenBank M19197). Under the alignment, the following symbols denote the degree of conservation observed at each amino acid position: (*) identical in all sequences; (:) conserved substitutions and (.) semi-conserved substitutions.