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J Virol, February 1998, p. 1610-1615, Vol. 72, No. 2
Institut für Virologie und
Immunbiologie1 and
Institut für
Pathologie,
Received 13 August 1997/Accepted 30 October 1997
Subgenomic expression plasmids for the so-called human foamy virus
(HFV) structural gag, gag/pol, and env genes were constructed and used
to analyze foamy virus particle formation by electron microscopy.
Expression of an R-U5-gag-pol construct under control of
the human cytomegalovirus immediate-early enhancer-promoter resulted in
the formation of viral cores with a homogeneous size of approximately
50 nm located in the cytoplasm. Upon coexpression of an envelope
construct, particles were observed budding into cytoplasmic vesicles
and from the plasma membrane. Expression of the Gag protein precursor
pr74 alone led to aberrantly formed viral particles of heterogeneous
size and with open cores. Normal-shaped cores were seen after
transfection of a construct expressing the p70gag cleavage product, indicating that
p70gag is able to assemble into capsids.
Coexpression of p70gag and Env resulted in
budding virions, ruling out a requirement of the reverse transcriptase
for capsid or virion formation. In sharp contrast to other
retroviruses, the HFV cores did not spontaneously bud from cellular
membranes. Radiochemical labeling followed by protein gel
electrophoresis also revealed the intracellular retention of
Env-deprived HFV capsids.
Foamy viruses (FVs) or Spumavirinae
are a particular group of retroid viruses which have a way of
replicating that is different from that of the other retroviruses and
the hepadnaviruses (36, 39, 42). While the genome
organization of the provirus is similar to that of the retroviruses,
there are differences in the way the Pol protein is expressed (4,
10, 20, 27, 42), in the kind of functional nucleic acid in the
virion (30, 42), in the structure and function of the Env
protein (15, 16), and in the regulation of gene expression
(7, 28). Some of these features appear to be at least partly
analogous to the hepadnavirus replication strategy (35, 36).
The particle assembly of FVs also appears to differ from that of
retroviruses. The primary sequence of the FV Gag protein lacks motifs,
such as the major homology region in the capsid domain (CA) and the
cysteine-histidine box in the nucleocapsid domain (NC), which are
conserved in all retroviruses (29, 41). Instead, the FV
region corresponding to NC harbors glycine-arginine boxes which are
involved in nucleic acid binding and in the nuclear transport of the
Gag precursor molecule (38, 43). However, the latter
feature, although well conserved among primate FVs, was found not to be
strictly required for the replication of the prototype human HFV (HFV)
(43). In virus-producing cells, two forms of the primate FV
Gag protein predominate, a pr74 and a p70 molecule (14, 18,
31). Both forms have also been found in approximately equimolar
amounts in extracellular infectious virions (33). It has
been shown that cleavage of the pr74gag
precursor, which generates p70gag, is essential
for virus replication (11). Furthermore, a
protease-defective virus mutant, unable to perform the pr74-p70
cleavage, was found to lead to morphologically aberrant capsid
structures (21).
The Gag protein-independent expression of the FV Pol protein from a
spliced mRNA (4, 20, 42) raised the question of whether Pol
is a structure-building component of FV particles or whether binding of
Pol to the pregenomic RNA may be a prerequisite for particle assembly.
To tackle this problem, cells were transiently transfected with
subgenomic expression plasmids for the HFV gag, gag/pol, and env genes
and analyzed by electron microscopy. In addition, we attempted to
identify which of the two HFV Gag molecules is the major
capsid-building element.
The expression plasmids shown in Fig. 1
were generated by conventional molecular cloning techniques (1,
37) in a pcDNA (Invitrogen) backbone. pMH4, pMH5, pMH5/M54,
pCgp1, pCgag1, and pCgag1/M62 are human cytomegalovirus immediate-early
promoter-enhancer-directed expression plasmids which use the
transcriptional start of HFV as described previously for the pcHSRV2
plasmid (30). pMH4 and pMH5 harbor an internal cassette,
made up of the U3 region of spleen focus-forming virus (2)
driving the expression of the green fluorescent protein (26)
in place of the HFV accessory reading frames (bel genes).
This cassette, however, is not relevant to the topic under
investigation in this study but simplifies the analysis of transfection
efficiencies.
To demonstrate the correct expression of the proteins, the plasmids
depicted in Fig. 1 were transiently transfected in 293T cells (8,
17, 25, 30). The cells were labeled with
[35S]methionine-cysteine, cellular lysates were prepared,
and after precipitation with HFV Gag-specific rabbit antiserum, the
proteins were resolved by sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel
electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) as described previously (11). As
shown in Fig. 2, all plasmids gave rise
to HFV Gag proteins of the expected sizes. The protease cleavage site
in pr74gag, used to generate
p70gag, was mapped roughly in a previous study
(11, 34). In the mutant pCgag1/M62, a premature stop codon
was introduced into the gag reading frame, resulting in a 30-amino-acid
truncation of Gag (11). As shown in Fig. 2, the protein
expressed from pCgag1/M62 was found to have an apparent molecular
weight similar to that of the wild-type p70gag
protein. We did not observe significant cleavage of the
pr74gag molecule upon transfection of pCgag1
(Fig. 2). Thus, a functional protease is not expressed from this
plasmid under the conditions analyzed, although the 5' part of the pol
gene is present in this construct. This is in accordance with recent
findings on the inability of isolated recombinant HFV protease to
cleave the Gag precursor (34). The correct expression of the
Env-encoding plasmid (pCenv1) and that of the pol gene ATG down-mutant
M54 have been demonstrated previously (10, 26).
0022-538X/98/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1998, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Foamy Virus Particle Formation
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FIG. 1.
Plasmids used to analyze HFV particle formation. pMH4,
pMH5, pMH5/M54, pCgp1, pCgag1, and pCgag1/M62 were derived from the
infectious molecular clone pcHSRV2 (30). These plasmids use
the human CMV enhancer-promoter and the transcriptional start of HFV.
The pol ATG down-mutant M54 and the 30-amino-acid C-terminal gag
truncation mutant M62 have been described previously (10,
11). The HFV genome in pCgag1 and pCgag1/M62 is deleted between
the AflII sites in the pol gene and in the U3 region of the
3' long terminal repeat (LTR). The internal cassette, made up of the U3
region of spleen focus-forming virus (2) directing the
expression of green fluorescent protein (26), is irrelevant
for this study. pCenv1 has been described earlier, where it was termed
pCHFV wt (26). A+ indicates the bovine growth
hormone gene poly(A) signal present in the pcDNA vector (Invitrogen).
aa, amino acids; ORF, open reading frame.

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FIG. 2.
Protein analysis of Gag expression constructs.
pMH4 (20 µg), pCgag1 (20 µg), pCgag1/M62 (20 µg), pCgp1
(20 µg), and pCgag1 (10 µg) together with pCgag1/M62 (10 µg) were
transfected into 2 × 106 293T cells by using
CaPO4 (17). At 36 h after transfection, the
cells were labeled metabolically with
[35S]methionine-cysteine (100 µCi/ml; PRO-MIX from
Amersham) for 12 h and subsequently processed for
immunoprecipitation with the HFV gag-2 rabbit antiserum (3)
as described previously (10, 11). Precipitated proteins were
resolved by SDS-7.5% PAGE, dried, and exposed to X-ray film. pMH5
transfection gave an identical result to pCgp1 transfection (data not
shown). MW, molecular mass marker.
Transfected 293T cells were fixed and processed for electron microscopy. As shown in Fig. 3, transfection of pMH4 led to the accumulation of numerous cytoplasmically located capsids that had a homogeneous size of approximately 50 nm (Fig. 3A) (13). These capsids appeared to be embedded in a dark-staining matrix structure of unknown origin. In addition, particles budding into intracytoplasmic vesicles or from the cytoplasmic membrane were observed (Fig. 3B and data not shown). A similar result was obtained when pCgp1 or pMH5 was transfected alone, resulting in capsids located in the cytoplasm (Fig. 3C), or was transfected together with pCenv1, resulting in capsids and budding virions (Fig. 3D).
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The transfection of pCgag1 resulted in morphologically altered structures (Fig. 3E and F). These particles were heterogeneous in size, ranging from 50 to 120 nm. Furthermore, the structures were often found to have a defect in circularization and presented as horseshoe-like open core structures. Similar abberantly formed particles were observed when the pol gene ATG down-mutant M54 was analyzed in the pMH5 background (Fig. 3G). Cotransfection of pCgag1 with pCenv1 led to budding particles with glycoprotein spike projections incorporated into the virus membrane (Fig. 3H). The transfection of pCgag1/M62 resulted in capsids with a wild-type morphology (Fig. 3I). Quantitation revealed that 19% (52 of 274) of the particulate structures in pCgp1-transfected cells showed an abnormal morphology, while 24% (90 of 324) and 92% (220 of 240) of the capsids in pCgag1/M62- and pCgag1-transfected cells, respectively, showed abnormal formations. The capsids in pCgag1/M62-transfected cells were located solely in the cytoplasm and were never observed to bud from any kind of cellular membrane. When pCgag1/M62 was cotransfected with pCenv1, enveloped particles with a regular spike morphology were observed (Fig. 3K and L).
These results demonstrate that the expression of the HFV p70gag molecule is necessary and sufficient for the formation of capsids. The Pol protein of HFV was found not to be required as a structural component for the initiation of capsid formation. The HFV Pol precursor protein is essential for capsid formation only because it cleaves pr74gag, which leads to the generation of the p70gag species. The p70gag molecule was also able to interact with the HFV Env protein, since budding virions with glycoprotein spikes were observed upon cotransfection of an Env-expressing plasmid. Furthermore, in contrast to all known exogenous retroviruses, where the capsids bud from the cytoplasmic membrane regardless of the presence of an Env protein (5, 9), in HFV, the Env protein appeared to be required for this process, at least in 293T cells.
To corroborate the latter finding by a different experimental method, the supernatant of 293T cells transiently transfected with different constructs was analyzed for the presence of viral proteins. The cells were transfected with pCgp1 alone or with pCgp1 plus pCenv1. Intracellular proteins were precipitated with HFV Gag-specific serum (11), while the supernatant of the transfected cells was centrifuged through a sucrose cushion and the resulting virus pellet was analyzed directly by SDS-PAGE. As shown in Fig. 4, transfection of pCgp1 and of pCgp1 plus pCenv1 gave rise to similar amounts of intracellular Gag proteins. However, only in cells transfected with pCgp1 plus pCenv1 were viral particles detected in the supernatant, which is consistent with the result obtained by ultrastructural analysis.
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As mentioned above, the replication strategy of FVs differs from the classical retroviral replication strategy in several ways. The results reported here demonstrate an additional difference in the method of virus particle generation. In exogenous retroviruses, the matrix (MA) domains of the Gag proteins harbor sequences which mediate the interaction of the precursor proteins with the cytoplasmic membrane and promote the release of viral particles in the absence of Env (9, 22). Env-independent particle release of exogenous retroviruses has been found by using many different expression systems and cell types (5). The mechanism does not require N-terminal myristoylation of MA and is also independent of the type of ultrastructural particle morphology (22). In the case of intracisternal A-type particles, (IAPs), the situation is somewhat different. IAPs lack a functional Env and assemble on membranes of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and bud into ER-derived cisternae (23, 40). Again, the interaction of IAP capsids with the ER membrane is mediated by a motif located in the MA domain (23, 40). FVs are also known to bud into ER-derived vesicles. An ER retention signal, located at the C terminus of the Env precursor, has been identified to be at least partly responsible for this (15, 16). Nonetheless, one might assume that Env-deprived FV capsids behave like IAPs with preassembled cores. However, upon an extensive search of 293T cells transfected with pCgag1/M62 or pCgp1, we did not observe any HFV particles that budded spontaneously into the ER or from any other cellular membrane.
The inability of FVs to release particles without the coexpression of Env protein is another feature that distinguishes this retrovirus subgroup from the other retroviruses. It again points to a similarity with hepadnaviruses (6, 12, 19, 24, 32); further investigations on the Gag-Env interaction will be required to elucidate more precisely the FV replication strategy.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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We are indebted to Ian Johnston for critically reading the manuscript.
This work was supported by grants from the DFG (SFB165), BMBF, EU, and Bayerische Forschungsstiftung. D.L. is supported by the Virology fellowship program of the BMBF.
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FOOTNOTES |
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* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Institut für Virologie und Immunbiologie, Versbacher Str. 7, 97078 Würzburg, Germany. Phone: (49)-931-201-3928. Fax: (49)-931-201-3934. E-mail: Rethwilm{at}vim.uni-wuerzburg.de.
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