Bovine Herpesvirus Type 4 Glycoprotein L Is Nonessential for Infectivity but Triggers Virion Endocytosis during Entry

The core entry machinery of mammalian herpesviruses comprises glycoproteins B, H and L (gB, gH and gL). gH and gL form a heterodimer with a central role in viral membrane fusion. When archetypal alpha- or beta-herpesviruses lack gL, gH misfolds and progeny virions are non-infectious. However, the gL of the rhadinovirus Murid herpesvirus 4 (MuHV-4) is non-essential for infection. In order to define more generally what role gL plays in rhadinovirus infections, we disrupted its coding sequence in Bovine herpesvirus-4 (BoHV-4). BoHV-4 lacking gL showed altered gH glycosylation and incorporated somewhat less gH into virions but remained infectious. However, gL- virions showed poor growth associated with an entry deficit. Moreover a major part of their entry defect appeared to reflect impaired endocytosis, which occurs upstream of membrane fusion itself. Thus, the rhadinovirus gL may be more important for driving virion endocytosis than for incorporating gH into virions, and is non-essential for membrane fusion.