1 Immunology-Vaccinology (B43b), Department of Infectious and Parasitic Diseases (B43b), Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Liège, B-4000 Liège, Belgium
2 Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge CB2 2QQ, UK
3 Centro de Investigación en Sanidad Animal (INIA), Valdeolmos, 28130 Madrid, Spain
4 Centro Nacional de Biotecnología (CSIC), Campus de Cantoblanco, 28049 Madrid, Spain
Correspondence
A. Vanderplasschen
A.vdplasschen{at}ulg.ac.be
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ABSTRACT |
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The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession number for the nucleotide sequence reported in this paper is AY740677.
Supplementary figures showing real-time binding data of human chemokines to purified soluble gG, and a schematic of the construction of a recombinant Felid herpesvirus 1 lacking gG and a derived revertant virus are available as supplementary material in JGV Online.
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MAIN TEXT |
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gG orthologues have been described in several alphaherpesviruses as a minor non-essential glycoprotein (Baranowski et al., 1996). Based on the viral species, gG has been reported either as a structural or a non-structural protein (Drummer et al., 1998
). However, gG orthologues exist under two different forms, a membrane-anchored form and a secreted form, the latter is generated by proteolytic cleavage of the former (Drummer et al., 1998
).
Felid herpesvirus 1 (FeHV-1) is an alphaherpesvirus with a worldwide distribution in the cat population (Roizman & Pellett, 2001). It is the causative agent of feline viral rhinotracheitis, but has also been associated with other clinical disorders (Stiles, 2003
).
In the present study, we investigated the function of FeHV-1 gG as a vCKBP. Firstly, the expression of a vCKBP in the supernatant of FeHV-1-infected cells was investigated by a cross-linking assay. Cell supernatants were prepared as follows: CrandellReese feline kidney cells (CRFK; ATCC CCL-94) were mock-infected or infected (1 p.f.u. per cell) with the FeHV-1 B927 strain (Gaskell, 1975). Cell supernatants were collected 2 days post-infection (p.i.) and submitted to three cycles of centrifugation (200 g for 5 min, 2000 g for 15 min and 100 000 g for 2 h). A cross-linking assay with human 125I-CCL3 (Amersham Biosciences) was performed on cell supernatants (equivalent to 57x104 cells) as described previously (Bryant et al., 2003
). A complex of 125I-CCL3 with a soluble protein was observed with infected supernatants but not with control mock-infected cultures (Fig. 1
a). The molecular mass of this complex was
60 kDa, suggesting a vCKBP of 52 kDa. To test the specificity of the interaction observed, cross-linking experiments were repeated in the presence of increasing doses of unlabelled CCL3 (PeproTech) or heparin (Sigma) (Fig. 1a
). The binding of vCKBP to 125I-CCL3 was inhibited by a 100-fold excess of unlabelled CCL3, demonstrating the specificity of the CCL3vCKBP interaction. Pre-incubation of chemokine with heparin did not interfere with the formation of 125I-CCL3vCKBP complex at doses up to 1000 µg ml1. This result suggests that either vCKBP and heparin bind to distinct domains of the chemokine or that vCKBP binds to both receptor and GAG-binding domains with the property to displace pre-established low affinity chemokineheparin interaction.
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To determine whether the secreted form of gG encodes chemokine-binding activity, gG was expressed using a baculovirus expression system (Bac-to-Bac; Invitrogen) as a full-length (BacgG.His) or a truncated form (BacgGTr.His) fused to a C-terminal six-His tag. The full-length form was produced by PCR using the forward primer 5'-CCGGATCCAATGGGAAATCGTATACATATTTTA-3', corresponding to BamHI site (underlined) and nt 124 of gG ORF, and the reverse primer 5'-GGCTCGAGTCAGTGATGGTGATGGTGATGTGGTTGGGGGTATCTTGTCAAC-3' corresponding to XhoI site (underlined), a six-His tag (bold) and nt 12811302 of gG ORF. Similarly, the truncated form was produced using the forward primer described above and the reverse primer 5'-GGCTCGAGTCAGTGATGGTGATGGTGATGTGGTTCGGTCGTAGGCTCG-3' corresponding to XhoI site (underlined), a six-His tag (bold) and nt 10921110 of gG ORF. Recombinant baculoviruses expressing full-length or truncated gG were then generated in Sf9 insect cells (ATCC CRL-1711) following the instructions of the manufacturer. Production of cell supernatants from baculovirus-infected Sf9 cell cultures for the chemokine cross-linking assay was performed as described previously (Bryant et al., 2003). The cross-linking assay with human 125I-CCL3 revealed a 125I-CCL3vCKBP complex of
55 kDa (Fig. 1b
, left panel). This complex was not observed with either the supernatant of mock-infected cells or the supernatant of cells infected with a control baculovirus expressing
-galactosidase (Bac
gal). This result suggests that the full-length form of gG can be naturally cleaved by insect cells to produce a secreted active protein. Finally, the gG truncated form was expressed in Hi5 cells (Invitrogen) and purified as described elsewhere (Bryant et al., 2003
). The chemokine-binding activity of the purified protein (gGTr.His; 150 ng) was demonstrated by cross-linking it to human 125I-CXCL1 (Amersham Biosciences) (Fig. 1b
, right panel).
The results presented above revealed that the secreted form of gG binds to CCL3 and CXCL1. To determine the range of activity of gG, chemokine-binding specificity was investigated by surface plasmon resonance as described in Supplementary material available in JGV Online. A set of 29 human chemokines, encompassing members of the four chemokine subfamilies, was injected over a biosensor surface coupled with purified gG. According to the response at the end of injection (R), three levels of binding were arbitrarily defined: high (R30 % of Rmax), intermediate (R between 15 and 30 % of Rmax) and insignificant (R
15 % of Rmax), where Rmax describes the binding capacity of the surface in terms of the response at saturation. Rmax was calculated by the formula: (MM analyte/MM ligand)ximmobilized amountxstoichiometric ratio. The results presented in Table 1
revealed that FeHV-1 gG exhibits a broad-binding activity, since most of the chemokines tested from CC, CXC and C subfamilies bound to some extent to gG. To measure the affinity of the interaction between gG and chemokines, kinetic parameters were also analysed for CXCL1, CXCL8, CCL5 and CCL3 chemokines. The sensograms obtained are available as Supplementary Fig. S1 in JGV Online. The results presented in Table 1
show that the four chemokines tested bind gG with rapid association kinetics (kass ranging from 0·56 to 5·77x106 M1 s1) and relatively slow dissociation kinetics (kdiss ranging from 0·26 to 9·46x103 s1), yielding a calculated KD ranging from 260 pM to 1·64 nM. These affinities demonstrated a high affinity of binding, which is similar or two- to 20-fold higher than the affinity of most chemokines for their cellular receptors (Murphy, 1996
). This observation suggests that, in vivo, gG may prevent the interaction of chemokines with their cellular receptors.
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To determine whether the membrane-anchored form of gG, expressed at the surface of FeHV-1-infected cells, could also bind chemokines, CRFK cells infected with the wild type, gG deleted or revertant viruses were tested for their ability to bind 125I-CCL3 as follows: at 2 days p.i. (m.o.i. of 2 p.f.u. per cell) cells were scraped and washed three times with binding medium. Cells in suspension (3·2x105 cells) were then incubated in a final volume of 150 µl with 160 pM 125I-CCL3 for 1 h at 4 °C. 125I-CCL3 bound to CRFK cells was then determined by phthalate oil (1·5 dibutyl phthalate/1 dioctyl phthalate; Sigma) centrifugation and -counting as described elsewhere (Dower et al., 1985
). Cells infected with wild type or revertant viruses bound significantly higher doses of 125I-CCL3 at their surface than cells infected with the recombinant virus lacking gG or mock-infected cells (Fig. 2c
). A competition assay using a 1000-fold excess of unlabelled CXCL1 demonstrated the specificity of the observed binding. These results demonstrate that the membrane-anchored form of gG exhibits chemokine-binding properties.
In the last part of this study, we investigated the expression of the chemokine-binding activity detected in the laboratory strain B927 among field isolates. A cross-linking assay with human 125I-CCL3 was performed on supernatants from cultures infected with five FeHV-1 field isolates recovered independently throughout Belgium from cats with feline viral rhinotracheitis (Fig. 1c). A complex of 125I-CCL3 with a soluble protein was observed for all the strains tested, indicating that they all express a vCKBP.
The present study was devoted to investigate whether FeHV-1 gG acts as a vCKBP. Our results demonstrate that FeHV-1 gG belongs to the newly discovered vCKBP-4 family; binding with high affinity to a broad spectrum of CC, CXC and C chemokines. In comparison to the unique previous report on the role of gG as a vCKBP (Bryant et al., 2003), the present study leads to two main and original conclusions. Firstly, it demonstrates that not only the secreted form but also the membrane-anchored form of gG expressed at the surface of virus-infected cells binds chemokines. Secondly, it shows that the expression of a secreted vCKBP activity is a general property of field strains.
Both secreted and membrane-anchored forms of FeHV-1 gG function as chemokine-binding proteins. It is noteworthy to mention that the latter property is unique to gG among the vCKBP families because all members described to date are expressed exclusively as soluble proteins in the supernatant. All alphaherpesviruses encode a gG orthologue expressed both as a secreted protein and a membrane-anchored protein (Drummer et al., 1998) with the exception of Human herpesvirus 3 and Marek's disease virus. The only known exception to this rule is gG encoded by Human herpesvirus 1 that exists only as a truncated membrane-anchored protein (Richman et al., 1986
). These observations suggest that both forms of gG play an important role in alphaherpesvirus biology. Concerning the secreted form, this study and the earlier report of Bryant et al. (2003)
suggest that, in vivo, gG could prevent the interaction of chemokines with their cellular receptors, and consequently inhibits their biological activity. Concerning the membrane-anchored form, the present study suggests that gG expressed at the cell surface could act as a decoy receptor by preventing the interaction of chemokines with their cellular receptors, and consequently inhibits their biological activity. Alternatively, the membrane-anchored form of gG could transduce signalling induced by the binding of chemokines to cell surface gG. However, no observation available to date supports this hypothesis. The membrane form of gG, in addition to its expression at the surface of infected cells, has been reported as a structural protein for several alphaherpesviruses (Drummer et al., 1998
). The function of gG present in alphaherpesvirus virions as a vCKBP is probable but it still needs to be formally demonstrated. If so, the chemokine-binding activity of gG present in virions could mediate the binding of virions to cell surfaces presenting chemokines bound to GAGs.
Further studies are required to determine the role of alphaherpesvirus gG chemokine-binding activity in viral pathogenesis both as secreted and membrane-anchored forms. The identification of the chemokine-binding activity of FeHV-1 gG opens the possibility of using cat infection by FeHV-1 as a homologous animal model to determine the role of alphaherpesvirus gG chemokine-binding activity in viral pathogenesis.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS |
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REFERENCES |
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Received 27 July 2005;
accepted 29 August 2005.
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