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The Journal of Immunology, 2000, 165: 2975-2981.
Copyright © 00 by The American Association of Immunologists

EBV Persistence Involves Strict Selection of Latently Infected B Cells1

Alexandra M. Joseph, Gregory J. Babcock and David A. Thorley-Lawson2

Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, MA 02138


    Abstract
 Top
 Abstract
 Introduction
 Materials and Methods
 Results
 Discussion
 References
 
EBV is found preferentially in IgD- B cells in the peripheral blood. This has led to the proposal that the recirculating memory B cell pool is the site of long-lived persistent infection. In this paper we have used CD27, a newly identified specific marker for memory B cells, to test this hypothesis. We show that EBV is tightly restricted in its expression. Less than 1 in 1000 of the infected cells in the peripheral blood are naive (IgD+, CD27-) and <1 in 250 are IgD+ memory cells. Furthermore, EBV was undetectable in the self-renewing peripheral CD5+ or B1 cells, a subset that has not been through a germinal center. No such restriction was observed in tonsillar B cells. Therefore, the virus has access to a range of B cell subsets in the lymph nodes but is tightly restricted to a specific long-lived compartment of B cells, the IgD-, CD27+, and CD5- memory B cells, in the periphery. We suggest that access to this compartment is essential to allow the growth-promoting latent genes to be switched off to create a site of persistent infection that is neither pathogenic nor a target for immunosurveillance.


    Introduction
 Top
 Abstract
 Introduction
 Materials and Methods
 Results
 Discussion
 References
 
Epstein-Barr virus is a pathogenic human herpesvirus with tropism for B lymphocytes (for general reviews see Refs. 1, 2). The virus is indiscriminate, being able to infect all B lymphocytes, irrespective of their differentiation state, as long as they express the viral receptors CD21 (3, 4, 5) and MHC class II (6). In vitro, this infection results in the expression of the transcription factor, EBV nuclear Ag-2, (7, 8), which, in turn, transactivates the promoters that lead to the expression of nine latent proteins (9, 10, 11). These latent proteins act in concert to drive the B cell to become a latently infected proliferating blast (12, 13, 14). However, we have shown recently that the virus in the peripheral blood of healthy carriers is not in activated blasts (15), but is restricted to latently infected (16), resting (17) B cells that express, at most, one of the nine latent proteins (latent membrane protein 2a) (18, 19, 20, 21). In addition, the virus is found preferentially in the IgD- fraction of peripheral B cells (22). The tissue-restricted and tightly latent form of persistence in the IgD- fraction led us to propose (22, 23, 24) that EBV resides specifically in memory B cells and exploits the long-lived nature of B cell memory (25, 26) to maintain a lifetime-persistent infection. Furthermore, we suggested that the virus infects normal B cells in the lymphoid tissue of nasopharyngeal epithelium and drives them to become activated lymphoblasts. These blasts, activated by EBV infection, can then differentiate through a germinal center (27, 28) to enter the recirculating pool of resting, peripheral, memory B cells. Thus, the virus gains access to the periphery, its site of long-term persistence, not by direct infection of IgD- cells, but through the differentiation of latently infected cells into the memory pool. The virus could then persist in resting, memory B cells where it would be nonpathogenic to the host because the growth-promoting latent genes are not expressed. The virus would also be secure from immunosurveillance because little or no viral genetic information is expressed.

In our previous study, we described the preferential localization of latent EBV to memory B cells in the periphery based on characterizing the cells as sIg+ and sIgD- (22). However, at that time there was no specific marker for peripheral, human, memory B cells available to confirm this hypothesis. Recently, it has been shown that CD27 is such a marker (29, 30); therefore, we have fractionated peripheral B cells on the basis of CD27 to directly ask whether EBV is restricted to memory B cells. Identification of CD27 as a B cell memory marker also allowed the discovery of a new subset of memory cells within the IgD+ subset (30). This raised the possibility that the small numbers of infected cells we found in the IgD+ B cell population represented the presence of the virus within the memory subset of IgD+ cells. Previously, we had considered that the low frequency of infected cells in the IgD+ fraction probably represented either contamination with IgD- cells or, less likely, the presence of a small number of IgD+, latently infected cells. However, because naive IgD+ cells constitute 75–80% of the peripheral B cell pool (31), this would mean that numerically as many as 10–20% of the virus-infected cells could be naive. Therefore, we have performed experiments to distinguish these possibilities. We have used anti-CD27 Abs, magnetic activated cell sorting (MACS),3 and FACS techniques to obtain highly purified populations of naive (IgD+, CD27-), IgD+ memory (IgD+, CD27+), and IgD- memory (IgD-, CD27+) cells and then assayed quantitatively the frequency of virus-infected cells in each population. In addition, our model proposes that differentiation through a germinal center is essential for latently infected cells to enter the long-lived pool of persistently infected B cells. Therefore, we have separated the B cells on the basis of CD5 expression and again assayed quantitatively for the virus. CD5 expression defines the long-lived/self-renewing B1 subset of B cells (32, 33) that are important in antimicrobial defenses but are not believed to go through a germinal center. If our model is correct, then the virus should be excluded from the CD5+ subset in the peripheral blood.


    Materials and Methods
 Top
 Abstract
 Introduction
 Materials and Methods
 Results
 Discussion
 References
 
Primary cells and cell lines

IB4 (gift of Elliot Kieff, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA) is an EBV-positive lymphoblastoid cell line. It contains three or four copies of the EBV genome and was used as a positive control for all PCR. BJAB, an EBV-negative B cell lymphoma, or EBV-negative tonsillar mononuclear cells were used as negative controls for all experiments and as carrier cells when the cell number tested was <1 x 104 cells.

Heparinized peripheral blood (240–480 ml) was layered onto Ficoll-Hypaque Plus (Pharmacia, Piscataway, NJ) and centrifuged at 2000 rpm for 30 min at 25°C. Plasma was aspirated, and the resulting buffy coats were removed and washed two times with PBSA (1x PBS/0.5% BSA) at 1200 rpm for 15 min. PBMCs were then resuspended at a concentration of 2 x 107 cells/ml in the same buffer. Tonsils were obtained from patients undergoing routine tonsillectomies for obstructed breathing disorders at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Tonsils were minced in PBSA, and the resulting suspension was passed through silkscreen to remove any connective tissue. The cell suspension was diluted to 1 x 107 cells/ml, and the buffy coat was isolated by Ficoll-Hypaque (Pharmacia) centrifugation as described above.

Magnetic bead separations

PBMCs and tonsillar mononuclear cells were resuspended to 2 x 107 cells/ml in PBSA as 1-ml aliquots. Biotinylated Ab was added to each tube and incubated on a rotator at 4°C for 30 min. The biotinylated Abs used were: {alpha}IgD Ab (Southern Biotechnology Associates, Birmingham, AL) for selection or depletion of IgD+ cells and anti-CD19 (our laboratory) for selection of B cells. All tubes were washed two times with PBSA and resuspended to 180 µl in the same buffer. Streptavidin-coated microbeads (20 µl; Miltenyi Biotec, Auburn, CA) were added to each and incubated for 15 min at 4°C. Cells were again washed and resuspended in 500 µl for separation using MACS columns (Miltenyi Biotec) and kept at 4°C at all times. The type of MACS column used depended on the amount of cells expected in the positive bound fraction. For an expected number <3 x 107 total positive cells, the AS column (Miltenyi Biotec) was used, and for expected numbers >3 x 107 but <2 x 108 total positive cells, the CS column was used. The MACS column was prepared by rinsing with three column volumes of PBSA and then inserted into a VarioMACS magnet. The flow rate of the column was adjusted by attaching either a 21-, 23-, or 25-gauge needle to the base of the stopcock. Cells were then loaded onto the column, and the negative fraction was collected. The cells were washed through by applying three column volumes of PBSA to the column while it was still attached to the magnet. The retained population was then washed by removing the column from the magnet and injecting one column volume of PBSA from the bottom of the column using the side syringe supplied. The needle was then replaced with a 21- or 23-gauge needle, the column was reinserted into the magnet, and cells were allowed to flow through. These cells were collected as the wash fraction and discarded. The column was again rinsed with three column volumes of PBSA, as before, to remove any remaining nonspecifically bound cells. The column was then removed from the magnet, the needle was removed, and the column was washed with five column volumes of PBSA to elute the retained cells.

FACS separations

Either due to the lack of biotinylated Abs for the markers CD27, CD5, IgA, and IgG, or to obtain highly purified cells, populations selected for the expression of these markers were obtained by FACS separation. For CD27 separations, IgD+ and IgD- CD19+ B cells were first isolated by MACS from whole PBMC or tonsillar mononuclear cells as described above. Both populations were then stained with goat F(ab')2 anti-human IgD FITC (Southern Biotechnology Associates) and anti-CD27-PE (PharMingen, San Diego, CA). For CD5 separations, the CD19+ bulk B cell population was isolated by MACS as described above. The resulting cells were stained with either anti-CD20 FITC (Dako, Carpinteria, CA) (a pan B cell marker) or anti-human IgD FITC and anti-CD5 PE (Leu-1; Becton Dickinson, Mountain View, CA). For analysis of memory B cells expressing different isotypes, IgD- CD19+ B cells were isolated by MACS as described above and the cells were costained with anti-CD20-FITC (Dako) and PE-coupled anti-IgA or IgG (Southern Biotechnology Associates). Relevant populations were sorted either on a FACStarPlus (Becton Dickinson) or the MoFlo (Cytomation, Fort Collins, CO).

Flow cytometric analysis was used to assay the purity of all isolated populations. All fractionated populations were analyzed using a Becton Dickinson FACScan with Lysis II software. After separation, all fractions were stained with an Ab of the appropriate isotype conjugated to PE (Southern Biotechnology Associates) as well as FITC-coupled {alpha}CD20 (Dako). As negative controls, MOPC21 (IgG1 isotype control; Sigma, St. Louis, MO), 1a2 (IgG2a isotype control; this laboratory), and MOPC121 (IgG2b isotype control; Sigma) were used. FACS analysis allowed for the determination of both the recovery and purity of the isolated populations.

DNA PCR and limiting dilution DNA PCR

Limiting dilution DNA PCR analysis was performed on isolated populations as described previously (22). Isolated populations were serially diluted, and then replicates of each cell dilution were distributed to the wells of a V-bottom microtiter plate (Nunc, Naperville, IL) and centrifuged at 1500 rpm for 15 min at 4°C. The supernatant was aspirated and the cell pellets were resuspended in 10 µl of a lysis solution containing 0.45% Tween 20, 0.45% Igepal CA 630, 20 mM Tris pH 8.3, 50 mM KCl, 2.0 mM MgCl2, and 0.5 mg/ml Proteinase K (Sigma). The plate was sealed, incubated at 55°C for >2 h, and then centrifuged briefly to remove condensation. Five microliters of the cell lysate were used in DNA PCR. DNA PCR specific to the W-repeat region of the EBV genome was performed in a final volume of 50 µl. Amplimers and reaction conditions have been described previously (22). Briefly, each reaction contained 50 mM KCl, 20 mM HCl pH 8.3, 2.0 mM MgCl2, 0.2 mM dNTPs, 20 µM each primer, and 1 U AmpliTaq DNA polymerase (Perkin-Elmer, Norwalk, CT). Reactions were conducted in a GeneAmp 9600 Thermocycler (Perkin-Elmer) at 95°C for 15 s and 66°C for 1 min for 30 cycles followed by a single 5-min 72°C extension step. PCR products were resolved on a 2% Nuseive Agarose (FMC, Chicago, IL), 1% Seakem LE Agarose (FMC) gel, and Southern blotted to Nytran Plus (Schleicher & Shuell, Keene, NH) as described by the manufacturer. Specific products were detected using random primed labeled, purified PCR product from Namalwa cells as previously described (17). Because the DNA PCR technique can detect a single copy of the viral genome, every sample with one or more infected cells will be detected. The fraction of negative samples was estimated for each cell dilution tested, and the frequency of virus-infected cells in the population was then estimated using Poisson statistics (for details of the quantitation, sensitivity, and confidence limits of the analysis see Ref. 34).


    Results
 Top
 Abstract
 Introduction
 Materials and Methods
 Results
 Discussion
 References
 
Only IgD-, CD27+ memory B cells are infected with EBV in the peripheral blood

The IgD+ and IgD- B cell fractions were isolated from the peripheral blood using sequential positive selection with biotinylated anti-IgD and anti-CD19 Abs and the MACS magnetic bead system as described previously (22). The B cell fractions were then stained with FITC-coupled anti-IgD and PE-coupled anti-CD27. The IgD+, CD27- (naive) cells, IgD+, CD27+ (IgD memory), and IgD-, CD27+ (memory) cells were purified using the FACS. With this approach, we obtained populations of cells that were always >95% pure and frequently >99% pure (Fig. 1Go, lower panels). The purified cells were then subjected to limiting dilution DNA PCR analysis (15, 34). For this assay, each sample is serially diluted, and then replicates of each cell dilution are tested for the presence of virus-infected cells by DNA PCR. By measuring the fraction of samples negative at each cell dilution and applying Poisson statistics, it is possible to calculate the frequency of virus-infected cells in the population. The DNA PCR detects a single copy of the viral genome (15). Therefore, the limiting dilution analysis allows for the precise calculation of the absolute frequency of virus-infected cells in a given population. The results of one such analysis are shown in Fig. 1Go (upper panels). EBV-infected cells were readily detected in the IgD- memory compartment (IgD-, CD27+). However, the virus was barely detectable in both the highly purified naive population (IgD+, CD27-) and, more surprisingly, in the IgD+ memory population (IgD+, CD27+). We have performed this experiment on three different donors, and a summary of the results are presented in Table IGo for the IgD+, CD27- population and in Table IIGo for the IgD+, CD27+ population. In two of the donors, no signals were observed at all in either IgD+ population, and, in the third, only one signal was detected. Therefore, the frequency of virus-infected cells in these populations was so low as to be incalculable by our techniques. For comparative purposes, we have presented the data as the number of signals that we would expect to see, for the number of cells tested, if the frequency in the IgD+ populations was the same as in the IgD- memory population (IgD-, CD27+). This expected value is then compared with the actual observed number of signals. By combining the results from all three experiments, it was possible to conclude that <0.1% of the virus-infected cells in the peripheral blood reside in the naive population and <0.4% reside in the IgD+ memory population. We conclude that latent or persistent virus is essentially absent from the IgD+ memory and naive populations. Therefore, the virus is tightly restricted to memory B cells that have switched away from IgD expression.



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FIGURE 1. EBV is tightly restricted to IgD- memory B cells. It is absent from the naive and IgD+ memory B cell subsets. Naive (IgD+, CD27-), IgD+ memory (IgD+, CD27+), and IgD- memory (IgD-, CD27+) B cells were purified from the peripheral blood by using a combination of MACS magnetic bead and FACS-based cell sorting as detailed in Materials and Methods. FACS reanalysis of the various populations studied is shown in the lower part of the figure. The purified populations were then subjected to DNA PCR limiting dilution analysis. For this assay, each sample is serially diluted and then replicates of each cell dilution are tested by DNA PCR for the presence of virus-infected cells. By measuring the fraction of samples negative at each cell dilution and applying Poisson statistics, it is possible to calculate the absolute frequency of virus-infected cells in the population. Southern blot analysis of the PCR products is shown in the upper part of the figure. The lanes with experimental samples are denoted with vertical bars (|), negative controls with (-), and positive controls with (+). The expected size of the PCR product is indicated by an arrow to the left. The absolute number of cells per sample is given to the left.

 

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Table I. EBV-infected cells are not detected in highly purified naive (IgD+, CD27-) B lymphocytes

 

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Table II. EBV-infected cells are not found in the IgD+, CD27+ memory B lymphocyte subset

 
EBV is present in B cells expressing switched isotypes

We have shown above that EBV is excluded from the IgD+ memory subset. Recently, evidence has been presented that it is even more narrowly restricted, being limited to memory cells expressing the IgA isotype (35). To test this claim, we have compared the frequency of virus-infected B cells in total IgD, CD27+ memory B cells with highly purified IgA+ and IgG+ memory B cells. These isotypes are expressed on widely differing fractions of memory B cells. The IgG memory cells constitute about half of the compartment, whereas the IgA memory cells constitute <10% (31). If the virus was restricted to the IgA compartment, we would expect to see a dramatic enrichment in the frequency of virus-infected cells in the purified IgA+ subset and a concomitant depletion in the IgG subset when compared with the bulk of unfractionated memory cells. The result of this experiment is shown in Fig. 2Go. The frequency of virus-infected cells was essentially identical in all three populations of cells, irrespective of surface isotype. We conclude that the virus is not measurably enriched in IgA+ or IgG+ memory B cells.



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FIGURE 2. EBV is not preferentially Found in IgA+ memory B cells. Total IgD-, CD19+ B cells were isolated from the peripheral blood with MACS magnetic beads as detailed in Materials and Methods. The cells were then stained with FITC-coupled anti-human IgG or anti-human IgA, and the isotype-specific memory cells were purified by FACS. The purified populations were then subjected to DNA PCR limiting dilution analysis. For this assay each sample is serially diluted and then replicates of each cell dilution are tested by DNA PCR for the presence of virus-infected cells. By measuring the fraction of samples negative at each cell dilution and applying Poisson statistics, it is possible to calculate the absolute frequency of virus-infected cells in the population. Southern blot analysis of the PCR products is shown. The lanes with experimental samples are denoted with vertical bars (|) and positive controls with (+). The expected size of the PCR product is indicated by an arrow to the left. The absolute number of cells per sample is given to the left.

 
EBV is restricted to the CD5- (B2) subset of B cells in the peripheral blood

We have hypothesized that EBV can only persist in vivo in the resting, recirculating, long-lived, memory B cell pool because there is only limited or no expression of viral proteins. The virus would achieve this quiescent state through the differentiation of latently infected lymphoblasts into resting memory cells via a germinal center.

CD5+ expression in the peripheral blood identifies a subset of B cells that are important in antimicrobial defenses (32). These cells constitute a long-lived, self-renewing subset of B cells that do not pass through a germinal center (33). Although CD5+ B cells are readily infectable in tissue culture, our model would predict that the virus will not be able to persist within this compartment in vivo. To test this, we again used MACS to isolate CD19+ B cells and used the FACS to separate the CD5+ and CD5- populations. The result of one experiment is presented in Fig. 3Go, and a summary of results from three such experiments are presented in Table IIIGo. As predicted, the virus was excluded from the CD5+ population and was tightly restricted to the CD5- (B2) population.



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FIGURE 3. EBV is tightly restricted to the CD5- (B2) subset of peripheral B cells. B lymphocytes were purified from peripheral blood with MACS magnetic beads using the pan B cell marker CD19. The resulting cells were costained with FITC-coupled anti-CD20 (a pan B cell marker) and PE-coupled anti-CD5. The CD5-positive and -negative B cells were isolated by FACS. FACS reanalysis of the populations of cells used in the study are shown in the lower part of the figure. DNA PCR limiting dilution analysis was performed on the purified CD5+ and CD5- cells. For this assay, each sample is serially diluted and then replicates of each cell dilution are tested by DNA PCR for the presence of virus-infected cells. By measuring the fraction of samples negative at each cell dilution and applying Poisson statistics, it is possible to calculate the absolute frequency of virus-infected cells in the population. Southern blot analysis of the PCR products is shown in the upper part of the figure. The lanes with experimental samples are denoted with vertical bars ( | ) and positive controls with (+). The expected size of the PCR product is indicated by an arrow to the left. The absolute number of cells per sample is given to the left.

 

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Table III. EBV-infected cells in the peripheral blood are limited to the CD5- (B2) subset of B lymphocytes

 
EBV is present in both CD5- (B2) and CD5+ (B1) B cells in the tonsil, a site of viral replication

We have shown previously that EBV has no specificity for IgD- cells in the tonsils, where infectious virus is produced (22). We believe that this reflects the promiscuous nature of EBV infection. This is known from in vitro studies where the virus is able to latently infect essentially any resting B cell that expresses the viral receptors. However, the studies described above indicate that the only infected cells that survive to persist in the peripheral blood are those that can exit the tonsil as IgD- memory cells. To test for the lack of cell-type specificity of latently infected cells in the tonsil, we have performed the frequency analysis on a variety of tonsillar B cell populations. We have tested cells fractionated on the basis of either IgD and/or CD5 expression. The results of one such experiment using CD5 is shown in Fig. 4Go, and all of the results obtained are summarized in Table IVGo. These studies provide a striking contrast to the high degree of restriction seen in the peripheral blood. The virus is found in all of the B cell subsets tested, irrespective of surface IgD or CD5 expression. Furthermore, there is no significant enrichment or depletion of virus-infected cells associated with any of the subsets.



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FIGURE 4. EBV is not restricted to CD5- (B2) cells in the tonsil. B lymphocytes were purified from tonsils with MACS magnetic beads using the pan B cell marker CD19. The resulting cells were costained with FITC-coupled anti-CD20 (a pan B cell marker) and PE-coupled anti-CD5. The CD5-positive and -negative B cells were isolated by FACS. FACS reanalysis of the populations of cells used in the study are shown in the lower part of the figure. DNA PCR limiting dilution analysis was performed on the purified CD5+ and CD5- cells. For this assay, each sample is serially diluted, and then replicates of each cell dilution are tested by DNA PCR for the presence of virus-infected cells. By measuring the fraction of samples negative at each cell dilution and applying Poisson statistics, it is possible to calculate the absolute frequency of virus-infected cells in the population. Southern blot analysis of the PCR products is shown in the upper part of the figure. The lanes with experimental samples are denoted with vertical bars ( | ) and positive controls with (+). The expected size of the PCR product is indicated by an arrow to the left. The absolute number of cells per sample is given to the left.

 

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Table IV. EBV-infected cells in the tonsil are not limited to the CD5- (B2) subset of B lymphocytes

 

    Discussion
 Top
 Abstract
 Introduction
 Materials and Methods
 Results
 Discussion
 References
 
In this paper, we present a detailed characterization of the surface phenotype of B cells, latently infected with EBV, in the peripheral blood. The exact phenotype is sIgD-, sIg+, CD27+, CD5-. Furthermore, we have presented quantitative evidence to show that EBV in the peripheral blood is tightly restricted to cells bearing this phenotype. The virus is specifically excluded from the naive (IgD+, CD27-), IgD+ memory (IgD+, CD27+), and B1 (CD5+) subsets of peripheral B cells. Therefore, latently infected cells are narrowly confined to a specific set of long-lived B cells, memory cells that have lost IgD expression. Because CD27+ memory cells are also CD23-, this conclusion is consistent with our earlier finding that the latently infected cells do not express CD23 (15).

One striking observation of this study is that the highly restricted nature of persistent infection in the peripheral blood exists despite the fact that all subsets of B cells are latently infected at the site of primary infection, the tonsil. We have shown previously that viral replication is ongoing in most healthy tonsils (22), and, consistent with the promiscuous nature of this virus, we see that every subset of B cells in the tonsil is infected. A cursory glance at Table IVGo demonstrates that subfractionation on the basis of CD5 and sIgD expression, either alone or in combination, does not delineate any obvious subset preference of the virus. In experiments not shown here, we have also fractionated tonsillar B cells on the basis of IgD expression and expression of CD10 and CD77, specific markers for germinal center B cells (36). Again, we found no significant or meaningful difference in the frequency of virus-infected cells between any of the tonsillar subsets separated on the basis of expression of these markers.

We also know that EBV has no subset preference for infection in vitro (3). The presence of the virus in all B cell types in the tonsil confirms that this lack of subset preference also occurs in vivo. Therefore, it would be very difficult to explain the high degree of selectivity of viral persistence in the periphery if the cells were simply derived through direct infection in the blood. Consequently, there must be highly restrictive mechanisms that only allow latently infected memory B cells to survive in the peripheral circulation. When EBV infects cells, including memory cells, in vitro, they become proliferating lymphoblasts (37), not resting cells. Yet we and others have shown that infected cells in the periphery are resting (17) and express little or no viral genetic information (18, 19, 20, 21). How does the virus achieve strict cell specificity and the resting state seen in the blood? One possibility is that only latently infected memory B cell blasts in the tonsil are able to leave the cell cycle and exit into the periphery as resting cells. We favor an alternate model that we have proposed previously, which suggests that B cell blasts activated by latent infection with EBV in lymph nodes can recapitulate the normal pathways of B cell germinal center differentiation (27, 28, 38) and thereby enter into the memory B cell pool. Memory cells produced through this pathway are CD27+, sIg+, sIgD-, and CD5- (28, 32). This is exactly the phenotype we observed for the latently infected cells in the peripheral blood. We believe that this differentiation process, which allows proliferating blasts to exit the lymph nodes as resting cells, provides a mechanism to down-regulate expression of the growth-promoting latent genes. The consequence of this is that the virus can establish a persistent infection in a cell type that is not pathogenic to the host and is not readily seen by CTL. Other infected subsets in the tonsil, like the B1 cell, that cannot undergo the differentiation process (32) will be destroyed by CTL before they can enter the peripheral circulation.

Our studies have also uncovered an interesting exception to the rule that EBV is associated with memory B cells in the periphery. This is the observation that the virus is not present in one particular group of memory cells, the IgD+ subset. The discovery of the IgD+ memory cell was made possible through the observation that CD27 expression was the first reliable marker for memory B cells and that lack of sIgD expression was not necessarily indicative of memory cell status (29, 30). To check that our isolated IgD+, CD27+ cells were bona fide memory cells, we have cloned and sequenced the expressed Ig genes on five separate occasions (data not shown). We confirmed the published studies that these cells had the mutations in the hypervariable regions of their Ig genes characteristic of Ag-selected memory cells (30). Nevertheless, it is apparent that these cells must be different from the other memory cells because they alone are incapable of sustaining a persistent infection with EBV. This means that the IgD+ memory cell is physiologically different from the rest of the memory pool and suggests that further investigation of the origin and significance of this subset would be worthwhile.

A recent report claimed that EBV in the peripheral blood was restricted to IgA-positive cells (35). However, in several studies, we have failed to repeat these observations. The rationale for the restriction was the high frequency of IgA-positive cells found in the mucosal epithelium where EBV is believed to initiate infection. However, this represents a misunderstanding. Although there is a high frequency of IgA-secreting plasma cells in the mucosal epithelium, the preponderance of memory cells at this site are IgM+ (39, 40). If EBV had a preference for a particular memory subset based on sIg isotype expression on mucosal memory cells, then it should be IgM. The reason for the discrepancy in the results is technical. In the paper of Ehlin-Henrikson et al. (35), the total IgM-bearing population of B cells was compared with the IgG- and IgA-bearing subsets. Because naive B cells are also IgM positive and constitute the bulk of peripheral B cells, the IgM+ fraction will be highly diluted by naive B cells that we have shown to be EBV negative. Similarly, selection for IgG+ cells frequently results in substantial contamination with monocytes that bear Ig on the surface Fc receptors. Because the Dynal system was used to purify the cells, it is not possible to confirm the absence of contaminating monocytes. Therefore, the IgM- and probably the IgG-positive populations used in that study contained large populations of contaminating uninfected cell populations that would lead to an apparently higher representation in the IgA+ subset. IgA+ memory cells constitute a very small fraction of the memory compartment (31); therefore, if EBV was restricted to this subset, then a striking enrichment should be seen in comparing the degree of infection in bulk memory cells vs the IgA+ subset and, conversely, a striking depletion should be seen on comparing the bulk to the IgG+ memory subset. Careful quantitation of the total number of genomes before and after fractionation would reveal whether a true enrichment in IgA+ cell was occurring. Such an enrichment was not seen in either our or the previously published studies (35).

In conclusion, we have defined the phenotype of virus-infected cells in the peripheral blood and shown that the virus is tightly restricted to a single subset, the isotype-switched memory B cell. This restriction does not hold in lymph nodes, leading to the conclusion that highly specific mechanisms must exist, allowing the selection of only latently infected memory cells into the long-lived memory pool.


    Acknowledgments
 
We thank Allen Parmalee for excellent flow cytometry and Cheryl Greene for providing the tonsils.


    Footnotes
 
1 This work was supported by U.S. Public Health Service Grants AI 18757 and CA 65883. Back

2 Address correspondence and reprint requests to Dr. David A. Thorley-Lawson, Department of Pathology, Tufts University School of Medicine, 136 Harrison Avenue, Boston, MA 02138. Back

3 Abbreviations used in this paper: MACS, magnetic activated cell sorting; PBSA, 1x PBS/0.5% BSA. Back

Received for publication March 27, 2000. Accepted for publication June 23, 2000.


    References
 Top
 Abstract
 Introduction
 Materials and Methods
 Results
 Discussion
 References
 

  1. Kieff, E.. 1996. Epstein-Barr virus and its replication. B. N. Fields, and D. M. Knipe, and P. M. Howley, eds. In Virology Vol. 2:2343. Raven Press, New York.
  2. Rickinson, A. B., E. Kieff. 1996. Epstein-Barr virus. B. N. Fields, and D. M. Knipe, and P. M. Howley, eds. In Virology Vol. 2:2397. Raven Press, New York.
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