The Newcastle disease virus (NDV) hemagglutinin-neuraminidase (HN) protein mediates attachment to cellular receptors. The fusion (F) protein promotes viral entry and spread. However, fusion is dependent on a virus-specific interaction between the two proteins that can be detected at the cell surface by a coimmunoprecipitation assay. A point mutation of I175E in the neuraminidase (NA) active site converts the HN of the Australia-Victoria isolate of the virus to a form that can interact with the F protein despite negligible receptor recognition and fusion-promoting activities. Thus, I175E-HN could represent a fusion intermediate in which HN and F are associated and primed for the promotion of fusion. Both the attachment and fusion-promoting activities of this mutant HN protein can be rescued either by NA activity contributed by another HN protein or by a set of four substitutions at the dimer interface. These substitutions were identified by the evaluation of chimeras composed of segments from HN proteins derived from two different NDV strains. These findings suggest that the I175E substitution converts HN to an F-interactive form, but it is one for which receptor binding is still required for fusion promotion. The data also indicate that the integrity of the HN dimer interface is critical to its receptor recognition activity.The Newcastle disease virus (NDV) hemagglutinin-neuraminidase (HN) is a multifunctional, type II membrane glycoprotein. It exists at the surface of virions and virus-infected cells as a tetrameric spike structure, consisting of a long, membrane-proximal stalk region that supports a terminal globular domain. The latter region of the spike is responsible for HNЈs recognition of sialic acid-containing receptors as well as its neuraminidase (NA) activity, which cleaves sialic acid from both soluble and membrane-bound glycoconjugates (18). All of the antibody binding sites on the protein also reside in the globular domain (21).Several hundred strains of NDV have been isolated from all over the world. The X-ray crystallographic structures of the globular domain of the HN from one of these, the Kansas strain, as well as the protein complexed with sialic acid or an inhibitor of NA, have been solved (3). These structures suggest that the attachment and NA activities of HN are mediated by a single sialic acid binding site in two different conformations. Consistent with this, substitutions for several active site residues abolish both attachment and NA (3).Similarly, substitutions for residues in the NA active site of the HN from the Australia-Victoria (AV) isolate of NDV (NDV-AV) also result in the loss of detectable attachment and NA (11). These substitutions include I175E, D198R, K236R, Y526L, and E547Q. However, our laboratory has shown that the attachment activity of each of these receptor recognitiondeficient mutants can be partially rescued by providing NA activity (11). Clearly, this is inconsistent with the existence of a single site for both attachment and NA. Rather, it suggests that the defi...