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Role of B-Cell Proliferation in the Establishment of Gammaherpesvirus Latency

Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases, Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia 30329,¹ Graduate Program in Molecular Cell Biology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri 63110,² Departments of Immunology and Pediatrics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195³

Received 11 February 2005/ Accepted 27 April 2005

Murine gammaherpesvirus 68 (HV68) provides a tractable small animal model with which to study the mechanisms involved in the establishment and maintenance of latency by gammaherpesviruses. Similar to the human gammaherpesvirus Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), HV68 establishes and maintains latency in the memory B-cell compartment following intranasal infection. Here we have sought to determine whether, like EBV infection, HV68 infection in vivo is associated with B-cell proliferation during the establishment of chronic infection. We show that HV68 infection leads to significant splenic B-cell proliferation as late as day 42 postinfection. Notably, HV68 latency was found predominantly in the proliferating B-cell population in the spleen on both days 16 and 42 postinfection. Furthermore, virus reactivation upon ex vivo culture was heavily biased toward the proliferating B-cell population. DNA methyltransferase 1 (Dnmt1) is a critical maintenance methyltransferase which, during DNA replication, maintains the DNA methylation patterns of the cellular genome, a process that is essential for the survival of proliferating cells. To assess whether the establishment of HV68 latency requires B-cell proliferation, we characterized infections of conditional Dnmt1 knockout mice by utilizing a recombinant HV68 that expresses Cre-recombinase (HV68-Cre). In C57BL/6 mice, the HV68-Cre virus exhibited normal acute virus replication in the lungs as well as normal establishment and reactivation from latency. Furthermore, the HV68-Cre virus also replicated normally during the acute phase of infection in the lungs of Dnmt1 conditional mice. However, deletion of the Dnmt1 alleles from HV68-infected cells in vivo led to a severe ablation of viral latency, as assessed on both days 16 and 42 postinfection. Thus, the studies provide direct evidence that the proliferation of latently infected B cells is critical for the establishment of chronic HV68 infection.

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