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Journal of Virology, November 2001, p. 10766-10778, Vol. 75, No. 22
Department of Medicine, Hematology-Oncology
Division,1 and Department of
Microbiology,3 University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, and Department of
Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics, UCLA AIDS
Institute, University of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles,
California 900952
Received 16 May 2001/Accepted 31 July 2001
Envelope glycoproteins (Envs) of human immunodeficiency virus type
2 (HIV-2) are frequently able to use chemokine receptors, CXCR4 or
CCR5, in the absence of CD4. However, while these Envs are commonly
dual-tropic, no isolate has been described to date that is CD4
independent on both CXCR4 and CCR5. In this report we show that a
variant of HIV-2/NIHz, termed HIV-2/vcp, previously shown to utilize
CXCR4 without CD4, is also CD4 independent on rhesus (rh) CCR5, but
requires CD4 to fuse with human (hu) CCR5. The critical determinant for
this effect was an acidic amino acid at position 13 in the CCR5 N
terminus, which is an asparagine in huCCR5 and an aspartic acid in
rhCCR5. Transferring the huCCR5 N terminus with an N13D substitution to
CCR2b or CXCR2 was sufficient to render these heterologous chemokine
receptors permissive for CD4-independent fusion. Chimeric Envs between
HIV-2/vcp and a CD4-dependent clone of HIV-2/NIHz as well as
site-directed Env mutations implicated a positively charged amino acid
(lysine or arginine) at position 427 in the C4 region of the HIV-2/vcp
env gene product (VCP) gp120 as a key determinant
for this phenotype. Because CD4-independent use of CCR5 mapped to a
negatively charged amino acid in the CCR5 N terminus and a positively
charged amino acid in the gp120 C4 domain, an electrostatic interaction
between these residues or domains is likely. Although not required for CD4-dependent fusion, this interaction may serve to increase the binding affinity of Env and CCR5 and/or to facilitate subsequent conformational changes that are required for fusion. Because the structural requirements for chemokine receptor use by HIV are likely to
be more stringent in the absence of CD4, CD4-independent viruses should
be particularly useful in dissecting molecular events that are critical
for viral entry.
0022-538X/01/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JVI.75.22.10766-10778.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
CD4-Independent Use of Rhesus CCR5 by Human Immunodeficiency
Virus Type 2 Implicates an Electrostatic Interaction between the CCR5 N
Terminus and the gp120 C4 Domain
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Biomedical
Research Building II/III, Room 356, University of Pennsylvania, 421 Curie Blvd., Philadelphia, PA 19104. Phone: (215) 898-0261. Fax: (215) 573-7356. E-mail: hoxie{at}mail.med.upenn.edu.
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