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Exposes a Cryptic Cytotoxic T Lymphocyte Epitope in HIV-1 Reverse Transcriptase1

*
University of Oxford, Nuffield Department of Medicine and Institute of Molecular Medicine, John Radcliffe Hospital, Headington, Oxford, United Kingdom; and
Division of Immunology, Department of Pathology, Cambridge, United Kingdom
| Abstract |
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-inducible proteasome ß subunits LMP2 and LMP7. In contrast,
both lactacystin treatment and expression of LMP7 induce the
presentation of the N-terminal VIYQYMDDL epitope. Consistent with these
observations we show that up-regulation of LMP7 by IFN-
enhances
presentation of the VIYQYMDDL epitope. Hence interplay between
constitutive and IFN-
-inducible ß-subunits of the proteasome can
qualitatively influence Ag presentation. These observations may have
relevance to the patterns of immunodominance during the natural course
of viral infection. | Introduction |
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and 14 ß subunits. The ß
subunits bear the catalytic activity. Three of these ß subunits,
LMP2, LMP7, and MECL-1, are IFN-
inducible and can replace the
constitutive catalytic subunits delta, MB1, and Z, respectively
(4, 5). Studies of mice deficient in either LMP2 or LMP7
indicate that these IFN-
-inducible subunits may play a role in Ag
processing. LMP2-deficient mice have fewer mature CD8 T cells and a
diminished CTL response to influenza virus infection (6).
Mice lacking LMP7 have diminished cell surface expression of MHC class
I and present an H-Y H-2Db epitope poorly (7).
To date there are no data on mice lacking both LMP2 and LMP7, or mice
deficient in MECL1. Recent evidence indicates that incorporation of
LMP2 and MECL1 into proteasomes requires LMP7 favoring the assembly of
homogeneous "immunoproteasomes" containing all three inducible
subunits (8). Thus there are at least two types of
proteasome within a cell; those which include the constitutively
expressed catalytic subunits and immunoproteasomes incorporating the
MHC-encoded subunits. These two proteosomes have different cleavage
specificities (9, 10, 11). HLA A*0201 is the dominant class I molecule in Caucasoid and other populations (12). Many HLA A*0201 HIV-1 infected patients mount a response to an immunodominant epitope encoded within the gag gene (residues 7785; numbered with reference to HIV-LAI). This epitope, SLYNTVATL, is part of the p17 matrix protein. We have documented several naturally occurring mutations within this epitope (13). In a study of 22 HIV-1-infected individuals with HLA A*0201, we found that 15 made a CTL response to this epitope (14). Patients with HLA A*0201 who do not make a CTL response to SLYNTVATL often have epitope mutations and respond to the reverse transcriptase (RT)4 epitope ILKEPVHGV (Pol residues 476-484) (14). The pattern of immunodominance of CTL epitopes in HIV-1 is not fully understood. Gag epitope outnumbers the RT epitope by over 30 times on the surface of stably infected Jurkat A2 cells (15). This may be caused by differences in the efficiency with which these peptides are produced. We also examined a further HLA A2-restricted epitope in HIV-1 RT of sequence VIYQYMDDL (Pol residues 346-354). The VIYQYMDDL RT epitope contains the core sequence YMDD, which constitutes the active site of RT (16). This sequence is invariant in HIV-1 (17, 18) and is conserved among RNA-dependent DNA polymerases from other human and animal retroviruses (16). Accordingly, this epitope is severely restricted in its ability to mutate and escape from CTL pressure.
Within HIV-1 RT, ILKEPVHGV appears to be the dominant HLA A*0201-restricted epitope (A. K. Sewell and D. A. Price, unpublished observation). Since the rules that govern the dominance of Ags are crucial to the understanding of immunity to pathogens, we were interested in the processing requirements of these two RT epitopes. While examining the role of the proteasome in their production, we found that these epitopes appear to be the result of different protein degradation pathways.
| Materials and Methods |
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LCL721.45 cells (.45), a wild-type derivative of LCL721, and
LCL721.174 cells (.174), which has only one copy of chromosome 6
containing a deletion in the class II region of the MHC locus and
therefore lacks the TAP1 and 2, LMP2, and LMP7 genes, are described
elsewhere (19). Transfection of .174 cells with TAP1 and 2
is described elsewhere (20). The HIV-1 Pol (ILKEPVHGV) CTL
line from patient SC6 and the VIYQYMDDL clone have been described
previously (21). HeLa cells transfected with HLA A2 were a
kind gift of Dr. H. Stauss (Hammersmith Hospital, London, U.K.). 174
cells expressing the TAP1 and TAP2 genes were transfected with plasmid
pCEP4
expressing the human LMP7b gene as described
elsewhere.5
Vaccinia infection
Target cells were infected with vaccinia at a multiplicity of infection (MOI) of 5 for 90 min and, after washing, resuspended in R10 (RPMI 1640 with added glutamine (2 mM), penicillin (100 IU/ml), streptomycin (100 µg/ml), and FCS (10% v/v)). Infected cells were grown overnight; shorter grow out times (<6 h) were not sufficient to produce significant lysis by CTL. The vaccinia expressing HIV-1 reverse transcriptase (RT-Vac; vCF21) is described elsewhere (22) and was obtained from the AIDS Reagent Program (Rockville, MD). An HIV-1 Gag expressing vaccinia (Gag-Vac) was used as a specificity control. This vaccinia has been described previously (23) and is available from the MRC AIDS Reagent Project (Potters Bar, U.K.).
Cytolytic assays
CTL assays were performed as described previously (23). Details of individual experiments are given in the figure legends.
Lactacystin treatment of target cells
Cells (106) were resuspended in 50 µl of R10 medium containing 100 µM lactacystin for 1 h prior to addition of vaccinia in 50 µl at MOI 5. After 90-min infection, cells were washed and resuspended in 5 ml of R10 containing 1 µM lactacystin and grown overnight to allow expression of the RT gene.
Treatment with IFN-
IFN-
(R&D Systems, Abingdon, U.K.) was added to culture
medium at 200 U/ml for 48 h prior to subsequent vaccinia
infections and lysis assays.
Western blots
A total of 7 µg of total protein from indicated cell lines was separated by SDS-PAGE and Western blotted for LMP7 and MB1 as described previously (4).
| Results |
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-inducible LMP7 to displace
the constitutively produced catalytic subunit MB1 (4) may
provide an explanation. Schmidtke et al. (25) recently
documented that substitution of the delta subunit of the constitutive
proteasome by the LMP2 subunit enhanced presentation of a class I
epitope.
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To further address whether the constitutive proteasome destroys
VIYQYMDDL, we examined the effects of lactacystin treatment on the
presentation of both RT epitopes in melanoma and HeLa cell lines which,
unlike .45 cells, constitutively express MB1 but little LMP7 by Western
blot (Fig. 3
A and
4C). The melanoma cell line ME275 was infected with
recombinant vaccinia virus expressing HIV-1 RT, and presentation of
both the VIYQYMDDL and ILKEPVHGV epitopes was examined simultaneously.
Figure 3
shows that only the ILKEPVHGV epitope is efficiently presented
in untreated cells. Treatment of the melanoma cell line with
lactacystin rescues the generation of VIYQYMDDL while presentation of
ILKEPVHGV is impaired. This result was repeated eight times; in HeLa
cells and two other HLA *0201 melanoma cell lines (data not shown).
Treatment of target cells with 350 µM Z-LLnL-CHO, which also inhibits
the proteasome (2), had the same effect as treatment with
lactacystin in that it increased presentation of the VIYQYMDDL epitope
from RT and decreased the lysis of treated cells by CTL specific for
the ILKEPVHGV epitope (data not shown). We were unable to inhibit the
production of the VIYQYMDDL epitope in lactacystin-treated cells with
10 µM Bestatin (British Biotechnology, Oxford, U.K.), 10 µM
E64d, 100 µM Z-GPFL-CHO, 10 µM TPCK/ZPCK, and 10 µM
AAF-chloromethyl ketone, which has been reported to inhibit the tricorn
protease (26), or 10 µM of the HIV-1 protease inhibitor
Ritonavir, which we have shown to inhibit the proteasome
(27) (data not shown).
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inducible. Release of IFN-
by T lymphocytes during HIV-1 infection
may alter Ag-processing pathways to enhance the presentation of cryptic
epitopes. To address this possibility, we examined the effect of
IFN-
treatment on the presentation of the VIYQYMDDL epitope from
HIV-1 RT. We used HeLa cells transfected with HLA A2 as targets since
the level of expression of LMP7 is very low and can be enhanced by
treatment with IFN-
(Fig. 4
restores presentation (Fig. 4
-mediated enhancement of VIYQYMDDL
presentation operates through modulation of genetic expression within
the region of the chromosome 6 deletion, which includes LMP7, in these
cells (Fig. 5
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| Discussion |
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In addition to the two epitopes in this study we have examined the processing requirements of a further HLA A2-restricted epitope from HIV-1 p17 matrix (data not shown). Of these three epitopes only one, the ILKEPVHGV epitope in HIV-1 RT, appears to be produced by the lactacystin-inhibited, threonine protease activity of the proteasome. The other epitopes appear to be the product of other distinct protease activities. It cannot be ruled out that activities other than the threonine protease activity of the proteasome (31) are responsible for the presentation of these other epitopes. Treatment of cells with lactacystin or overexpression of LMP7 may have pleiotropic effects on cellular metabolism. Thus it is not possible to eliminate the fact that the effects on presentation of the viral Ags studied here are indirect. Furthermore, different cell types may process and present the same CTL epitope through distinct degradation pathways. In this respect, we observed that presentation of the ILKEPVHGV epitope, which is lactacystin-sensitive in the melanoma cell line ME275, is less sensitive to lactacystin treatment in .174 TAP cells.
We document the processing of two HLA A*0201-restricted CTL epitopes in
HIV-1 RT by distinct pathways and demonstrate that lack of the
IFN-
-inducible subunit LMP7 impairs the generation of the
subdominant epitope. These findings imply that modulation of
IFN-
-inducible subunits of the proteasome during the acute phase of
infection may substantially alter the pattern of production of HIV-1
CTL epitopes. It has been suggested that the hierarchy of T cell
responses to different epitopes is influenced by the relative
efficiency of epitope generation (15, 32). Whether it is
these requirements or other factors that determine the dominance of one
CTL epitope over another in HIV-1 remains to be determined.
It is tempting to speculate that the release of soluble factors, such
as IFN-
, by early CTL at sites of infection may alter the processing
patterns of viral proteins within infected cells. Initial CTL responses
may be generated to epitopes produced by the normal Ag processing
machinery including the constitutive proteasome. The secretory
functions of these CTL may then operate to expose further "cryptic"
epitopes within infected tissues.
In addition, our results have some broader implications. Since it is clear that altered protein degradation can lead to the generation of different CTL epitopes, it seems likely that cells altered in their protein degradation may display a different repertoire of self-peptides complexed with MHC class I on their surface. Any such local alteration in protein degradation, perhaps triggered by an infectious agent, may be the basis of some autoimmune conditions.
| Acknowledgments |
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| Footnotes |
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2 D.A.P. and H.T. contributed equally to this work. ![]()
3 Address correspondence and reprint requests to Dr. Vincenzo Cerundolo, University of Oxford, Nuffield Department of Medicine and Institute of Molecular Medicine, John Radcliffe Hospital, Headington, Oxford, U.K. E-mail address: ![]()
4 Abbreviations used in this paper: RT, reverse transcriptase; RT-Vac, the vaccinia expressing HIV-1 RT; MOI, multiplicity of infection; Gag-Vac, HIV-1 Gag expressing vaccinia; .45 cells, LCL721.45 cells; .174 cells, LCL721.174 cells. ![]()
5 I. Correa, H. Teisserenc, L. Van Kaer, H. J. Fehling, V. Cerundolo, and J. Trowsdale. LMP7 is a key subunit in the assembly of the immunoproteasome and in the presentation of an immunodominant influenza virus epitope to cytotoxic T lymphocytes. Submitted for publication. ![]()
Received for publication January 14, 1999. Accepted for publication April 1, 1999.
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