The cleavage site sequence of the fusion (F) protein contributes to a wide range of virulence of Newcastle disease virus (NDV). In this study, we identified other important amino acid sequences of the F protein that affect cleavage and modulation of fusion. We generated chimeric Beaudette C (BC) viruses containing the cleavage site sequence of avirulent strain LaSota (Las-Fc) together with various regions of the F protein of another virulent strain AKO. We found that the F1 subunit is important for cleavage inhibition. Further dissection of the F1 subunit showed that replacement of four amino acids in the BC/Las-Fc protein with their AKO counterparts (T341S, M384I, T385A and I386L) resulted in an increase in fusion and replication in vitro. In contrast, the mutation N403D greatly reduced cleavage and viral replication, and affected protein conformation. These findings will be useful in developing improved live NDV vaccines and vaccine vectors.Virulent strains of Newcastle disease virus (NDV) cause a devastating disease in chickens leading to major economic losses in the poultry industry worldwide (Alexander, 1989). NDV is a member of the genus Avulavirus in the family Paramyxoviridae. The virion is enveloped, with a non-segmented, negative-sense ssRNA genome (Samal, 2011). The genome encodes a nucleocapsid protein (N), a phosphoprotein (P), a matrix protein (M), a fusion protein (F), a haemagglutinin-neuraminidase protein (HN) and a large polymerase protein (L).NDV isolates vary greatly in their pathogenicity for chickens and are categorized into three main pathotypes: lentogenic (avirulent), mesogenic (moderately virulent) and velogenic (highly virulent) (Alexander, 1989). The amino acid sequence at the F protein cleavage site has been identified as the primary determinant of virulence (Panda et al., 2004;Peeters et al., 1999). Virulent NDV strains have multibasic cleavage sequences that contain the preferred cleavage site of the intracellular protease furin (Arg-X-Arg/Lys-Arg # ), available in most cell types. In contrast, avirulent NDV strains typically contain one or two basic residues at the F protein cleavage site and are delivered to the plasma membrane in an uncleaved form for cleavage by extracellular proteases. Modification of the cleavage site sequence in the F protein has been shown to greatly alter the replication and pathogenicity of NDV (de Leeuw et al., 2005;Hu et al., 2011;Panda et al., 2004;Peeters et al., 1999; Xiao et al., 2012). In our previous study, we modified the F protein cleavage site sequence (RRQKR # F) of a highly virulent NDV strain Ban010 (genotype VII) to that of avirulent NDV strain LaSota (GRQGR # L), resulting in an avirulent derivative rBan/AF (Xiao et al., 2012). The parental virulent Ban010 virus produced extensive syncytia and plaque in cell culture in the absence of added protease, whereas the avirulent rBan/AF derivative caused only single-cell infections without syncytia or plaque formation in the presence or absence of extracellular protease. This result was unexpecte...