Identification of Human Junctional Adhesion Molecule 1 as a Functional Receptor for the Hom-1 Calicivirus on Human Cells

The Hom-1 vesivirus was reported in 1998 following the inadvertent transmission of the animal calicivirus San Miguel sea lion virus to a human host in a laboratory. We characterized the Hom-1 strain and investigated the mechanism by which human cells could be infected. An expression library of 3,559 human plasma membrane proteins was screened for reactivity with Hom-1 virus-like particles, and a single interacting protein, human junctional adhesion molecule 1 (hJAM1), was identified. Transient expression of hJAM1 conferred susceptibility to Hom-1 infection on nonpermissive Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells. Virus infection was markedly inhibited when CHO cells stably expressing hJAM were pretreated with anti-hJAM1 monoclonal antibodies. Cell lines of human origin were tested for growth of Hom-1, and efficient replication was observed in HepG2, HuH7, and SK-CO15 cells. The three cell lines (of hepatic or intestinal origin) were confirmed to express hJAM1 on their surface, and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/Cas9-mediated knockout of the hJAM1 gene in each line abolished Hom-1 propagation. Taken together, our data indicate that entry of the Hom-1 vesivirus into these permissive human cell lines is mediated by the plasma membrane protein hJAM1 as a functional receptor.