Fig. 3.

Targeting DCs by LCMV: role of the ECM molecules in the interaction of LCMV with α-DG. α-DG undergoes high-affinity interactions with ECM such as laminin. These ECM components may interfere with virus binding to the cell and, therefore, provide a barrier for virus infection of specific cells such as CD11c⁺ DCs. High-affinity binding LCMV variants such as Cl 13 (upper panel) may compete successfully with laminin for α-DG, whereas low-affinity binders such as ARM (lower panel) are unable to displace laminin. The lack of association between laminin expression (Fig. 2) and ARM distribution (Fig. 5) suggests that laminin may interfere with ARM infection