Previous Article | Next Article ![]()
Journal of Virology, July 1999, p. 6093-6098, Vol. 73, No. 7
Unité des Virus Lents (URA CNRS
1930)1 and Laboratoire de Microscopie
Electronique,2 Institut Pasteur, 75724 Paris
Cedex 15, France
Received 6 January 1999/Accepted 29 March 1999
Following intracerebral inoculation, the DA strain of Theiler's
virus sequentially infects neurons in the gray matter and glial cells
in the white matter of the spinal cord. It persists in the latter
throughout the life of the animal. Several observations suggest that
the virus spreads from the gray to the white matter by axonal
transport. In contrast, the neurovirulent GDVII strain causes a fatal
encephalitis with lytic infection of neurons. It does not infect the
white matter of the spinal cord efficiently and does not persist in
survivors. The inability of this virus to infect the white matter could
be due to a defect in axonal transport. Using footpad inoculations, we
showed that the GDVII strain is, in fact, transported in axons.
Transport was prevented by sectioning the sciatic nerve. The kinetics
of transport and experiments using colchicine suggested that the virus
uses microtubule-associated fast axonal transport. Our results show
that a cardiovirus can spread by fast axonal transport and suggest that
the inability of the GDVII strain to infect the white matter is not due
to a defect in axonal transport.
Theiler's murine encephalomyelitis
virus (TMEV) belongs to the Cardiovirus genus within the
Picornaviridae family (22, 24, 27). Most strains
of TMEV, including the DA and BeAn strains, cause a biphasic disease of
the central nervous system (CNS) after intracranial inoculation
(17). The first phase, which occurs during the first 7 to 10 days, is an acute encephalomyelitis. At this time, the virus is found
in the gray matter of the CNS, predominantly in neurons and in a small
number of glial cells (2). Soon after, the virus disappears
from the gray matter and infects the white matter of the spinal cord,
where it persists, mainly in macrophage-microglial cells and, to a
lesser extent, in oligodendrocytes (19, 26). Persistence in
the white matter causes chronic inflammation and primary demyelination.
Although the routes of TMEV dissemination within the CNS have not been
fully explored, there is a good indication that the virus may use
axonal transport. Viral antigens have been found in axons by using
ultrastructural immunohistochemistry (8), and the pattern of
spread of the virus within the limbic system in mice is consistent with
axonal transport (35). Furthermore, TMEV antigens are found
rather early in the corticospinal tract, the main pathway from the
brain to the anterior horn cells (35), and infected white
matter macrophages have been found close to axons containing viral
antigens (19).
In contrast to the DA and BeAn strains, the GDVII strain is highly
neurovirulent and kills its host in a matter of days (33). It does not persist in the CNSs of the rare survivors (16). Attenuated variants of this strain have been used recently to confirm its incapacity to persist (12, 18).
Importantly, the GDVII strain, which infects the gray matter,
where it replicates almost exclusively in neurons (2, 30),
does not infect the white matter (12). Viral recombinants
between the persisting DA or BeAn strain and the virulent GDVII strain
have been constructed by several groups in order to map viral genes
responsible for persistence. The results obtained by different
laboratories are, on the whole, consistent and show that the capsids of
the DA and BeAn strains bear the main determinants of persistence
(1, 20). Studies from our group showed that the ability to
persist correlates with the ability to infect the white matter of the spinal cord (10). Thus, the capsid of the DA strain may
determine persistence by allowing the infection of white matter glial
cells. Among other possibilities, the DA capsid could allow the virus to be transported in axons. According to this hypothesis, the inability
of the GDVII virus to infect the white matter and to persist could be
due to defective axonal transport. There is a precedent for closely
related strains of the same virus differing in their abilities to be
transported in axons. Tyler et al. showed that reovirus type 3 reaches
the CNS via fast axonal transport, whereas type 1 reaches it via the
bloodstream, and that this difference maps to the gene coding for the
viral hemagglutinin (34). In the present work, we tested the
ability of the GDVII strain to be transported in axons, using the
paradigm of transport to the spinal cord through the sciatic nerve
after footpad inoculation.
Clinical signs after footpad inoculation.
The GDVII virus
infects and kills CNS neurons efficiently. If it is able to spread from
the periphery to the spinal cord through the sciatic nerve, it will
cause paralysis, appearing first in the inoculated limb. Eleven 4- to
5-week-old SJL/J mice were inoculated in the left hind footpad with 50 µl of phosphate-buffered saline containing 5 × 106
PFU of the GDVII strain and were examined daily for clinical signs. All
mice showed symptoms. The typical course of the disease was paralysis
of the inoculated limb 5 to 6 days postinoculation (p.i.), followed by
paralysis of the contralateral hind limb 1 to 2 days later. Death of
the animals occurred 9 to 10 days p.i. These results were consistent
with the spread of the GDVII strain from the periphery to the CNS via
the sciatic nerve.
Detection of the virus in the sciatic nerve and the spinal
cord.
If the GDVII virus spreads from the footpad to the spinal
cord through the sciatic nerve, viral RNA should appear first in the
sciatic nerve of the inoculated leg, then in the inferior spinal
cord
0022-538X/99/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1999, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
The GDVII Strain of Theiler's Virus Spreads via Axonal
Transport

![]()
ABSTRACT
Top
Abstract
Text
References
![]()
TEXT
Top
Abstract
Text
References
the region containing the neurons innervating the skin and
muscles of the footpad
and lastly in the superior spinal cord. In
contrast, if the virus reaches the CNS via the bloodstream, it should
appear in the inferior and superior regions of the spinal cord at the
same time. The pattern of the spread of TMEV to the CNS was examined by
inoculating SJL/J mice with 5 × 106 PFU of the GDVII
strain in the left hind footpad and sacrificing them on days 1 through
4 p.i. The spinal cords and sciatic nerves were removed. The
spinal cord was divided into a superior segment, which consisted of the
cervical cord, and an inferior segment, which consisted of the thoracic
and lumbosacral cords. Total RNA was extracted from tissues as
previously described (6), and viral RNA was detected by
reverse transcription (RT)-PCR. Briefly, RT was performed with 10 µg
of spinal cord RNA or with the totality of RNA extracted from the
sciatic nerve. Then, 30 cycles of PCR were performed with primers
specific for part of the capsid-coding region of the viral genome. The
primers corresponded to GDVII virus nucleotides 2889 to 2909 (5'-TGACCCCCCTGACCTACCCTT-3') and 3969 to 3989 (5'-CGCCCATGCACACGAGCATTC-3'). After separation by electrophoresis, the PCR products were transferred to nylon
membranes and hybridized with a 32P-labeled probe
consisting of nucleotides 3297 to 3319. For each tissue sample
examined, except for sciatic nerve because of the limited amount of RNA
available, the housekeeping
-actin mRNA was amplified in parallel by
RT-PCR to confirm the integrity of the RNA (data not shown).
0.002). The reappearance of viral RNA in the left
sciatic nerve 4 days p.i. might have been due to axonal transport from
the spinal cord back to the periphery.

View larger version (16K):
[in a new window]
FIG. 1.
Spread of the GDVII strain from the footpad to the
sciatic nerve and the spinal cord. Shown are the percentages of mice
inoculated in the footpad in which viral RNA was detected in the
ipsilateral (
) or contralateral (
) sciatic nerve and in the
inferior (
) or superior (
) spinal cord. The percentages were
calculated from the data shown in Table 1.
TABLE 1.
Summary of the patterns of the spread of the GDVII strain
from the periphery to the CNS in SJL/J mice after different treatments
of the sciatic nervea
|
|
Effect of colchicine on the transport of the virus through the
sciatic nerve.
Our experiments did not identify the mechanism of
transport of the GDVII virus in the sciatic nerve, although the
presence of viral RNA in the inferior spinal cord as early as 2 days
p.i. strongly suggested fast axonal transport. To examine this point in
more detail, we studied the spread of the GDVII virus to the spinal
cord after treatment of the sciatic nerve with colchicine, an agent
which causes a reversible dissociation of microtubules and inhibits
fast axonal transport (25). Briefly, 20 µg of colchicine in 40 µl of phosphate-buffered saline was injected into the left hind
footpad. The animals were inoculated with 5 × 106 PFU
of the GDVII strain 20 h later. The treatment caused a delay in
the appearance of viral RNA in the spinal cord (Table 1 and Fig.
4). Viral RNA could not be detected in
the spinal cord before 3 days p.i., and it was detected in only 2 of 11 mice. The difference between the kinetics of appearance of viral RNA in
the inferior spinal cord with colchicine treatment and that without it
was statistically significant (P
0.001).
|
|
| |
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
|---|
We thank Laurence Fiette for helpful discussions and Mireille Gau for secretarial assistance.
This work was supported by grants from the Institut Pasteur Fondation, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, the Association pour la Recherche sur la Sclérose en Plaques, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and the EC Human Capital and Mobility program (contract no. CHRX-CT94-0670). C.M. is a recipient of a scholarship from the Ministère de la Recherche et de l'Enseignement Supérieur.
| |
FOOTNOTES |
|---|
* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Unité des Virus Lents, Institut Pasteur, 28, rue du Dr. Roux, 75724 Paris Cedex 15, France. Phone: 33 1 45 68 87 70. Fax: 33 1 40 61 31 67. E-mail: mbrahic{at}pasteur.fr.
Present address: Hormone Research Institute, University of
California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143-0534.
| |
REFERENCES |
|---|
|
|
|---|
| 1. |
Adami, C.,
A. E. Pritchard,
T. Knauf,
M. Luo, and H. L. Lipton.
1998.
A determinant for central nervous system persistence localized in the capsid of Theiler's murine encephalomyelitis virus by using recombinant viruses.
J. Virol.
72:1662-1665 |
| 2. | Aubert, C., and M. Brahic. 1995. Early infection of the central nervous system by the GDVII and DA strains of Theiler's virus. J. Virol. 69:3197-3200[Abstract]. |
| 3. | Aubert, C., M. Chamorro, and M. Brahic. 1987. Identification of Theiler's virus infected cells in the central nervous system of the mouse during demyelinating disease. Microb. Pathog. 3:319-326[Medline]. |
| 4. |
Bulenga, G., and T. Heaney.
1978.
Post-exposure local treatment of mice infected with rabies with two axonal flow inhibitors, colchicine and vinblastine.
J. Gen. Virol.
39:381-385 |
| 5. | Ceccaldi, P. E., J. P. Gillet, and H. Tsiang. 1989. Inhibition of the transport of rabies virus in the central nervous system. J. Neuropathol. Exp. Neurol. 48:620-630[Medline]. |
| 6. | Chomczynski, P., and N. Sacchi. 1987. Single-step method of RNA isolation by acid guanidinium thiocyanate-phenol-chloroform extraction. Anal. Biochem. 162:156-159[Medline]. |
| 7. | Dal Canto, M. C., R. L. Barbano, and B. Jubelt. 1986. Ultrastructural immunohistochemical localization of poliovirus during virulent infection of mice. J. Neuropathol. Exp. Neurol. 45:613-618[Medline]. |
| 8. | Dal Canto, M. C., and H. L. Lipton. 1982. Ultrastructural immunohistochemical localization of virus in acute and chronic demyelinating Theiler's virus infection. Am. J. Pathol. 106:20-29[Abstract]. |
| 9. | Hirokawa, N. 1993. Mechanism of axonal transport. Neurosci. Res. 18:1-9[Medline]. |
| 10. |
Jarousse, N.,
L. Fiette,
R. A. Grant,
J. M. Hogle,
A. McAllister,
T. Michiels,
C. Aubert,
F. Tangy,
M. Brahic, and C. Peña Rossi.
1994.
Chimeric Theiler's virus with altered tropism for the central nervous system.
J. Virol.
68:2781-2786 |
| 11. |
Jarousse, N.,
S. Syan,
C. Martinat, and M. Brahic.
1998.
The neurovirulence of the DA and GDVII strains of Theiler's virus correlates with their ability to infect cultured neurons.
J. Virol.
72:7213-7220 |
| 12. |
Jarousse, N.,
E. G. Viktorova,
E. V. Pilipenko,
V. I. Agol, and M. Brahic.
1999.
An attenuated variant of the GDVII strain of Theiler's virus does not persist and does not infect the white matter of the central nervous system.
J. Virol.
73:801-804 |
| 13. | Jelachich, M. L., P. Bandyopadhyay, K. Blum, and H. L. Lipton. 1995. Theiler's virus in murine macrophage cell lines depends on the state of differentiation. Virology 209:437-444[Medline]. |
| 14. | Jubelt, B., O. Narayan, and R. T. Johnson. 1980. Pathogenesis of human poliovirus infection in mice. II. Age-dependency of paralysis. J. Neuropathol. Exp. Neurol. 39:149-159[Medline]. |
| 15. | Kristensson, K., E. Lycke, and J. Sjostrand. 1971. Spread of herpes simplex virus in peripheral nerves. Acta Neuropathol. 17:44-53[Medline]. |
| 16. |
Lipton, H. L.
1980.
Persistent Theiler's murine encephalomyelitis virus infection in mice depends on plaque size.
J. Gen. Virol.
46:169-177 |
| 17. |
Lipton, H. L.
1975.
Theiler's virus infection in mice: an unusual biphasic disease process leading to demyelination.
Infect. Immun.
11:1147-1155 |
| 18. | Lipton, H. L., A. E. Pritchard, and M. A. Calenoff. 1998. Attenuation of neurovirulence of Theiler's murine encephalomyelitis virus strain GDVII is not sufficient to establish persistence in the central nervous system. J. Gen. Virol. 79:1001-1004[Abstract]. |
| 19. | Lipton, H. L., G. Twaddle, and M. L. Jelachich. 1995. The predominant virus antigen burden is present in macrophages in Theiler's murine encephalomyelitis virus-induced demyelinating disease. J. Virol. 69:2525-2533[Abstract]. |
| 20. |
McAllister, A.,
F. Tangy,
C. Aubert, and M. Brahic.
1990.
Genetic mapping of the ability of Theiler's virus to persist and demyelinate.
J. Virol.
64:4252-4257 |
| 21. | Obuchi, M., Y. Ohara, T. Takegami, T. Murayama, H. Takada, and H. Iizuka. 1997. Theiler's murine encephalomyelitis virus subgroup strain-specific infection in a murine macrophage-like cell line. J. Virol. 71:729-733[Abstract]. |
| 22. | Ohara, Y., S. Stein, J. Fu, L. Stillman, L. Klaman, and R. P. Roos. 1988. Molecular cloning and sequence determination of DA strain of Theiler's murine encephalomyelitis viruses. Virology 164:245-255[Medline]. |
| 23. | Ohka, S., W.-X. Yang, E. Terada, K. Iwasaki, and A. Nomoto. 1998. Retrograde transport of intact poliovirus through the axon via the fast transport system. Virology 250:67-75[Medline]. |
| 24. |
Ozden, S.,
F. Tangy,
M. Chamorro, and M. Brahic.
1986.
Theiler's virus genome is closely related to that of encephalomyocarditis virus, the prototype cardiovirus.
J. Virol.
60:1163-1165 |
| 25. | Paulson, J. C., and W. O. McClure. 1975. Inhibition of axoplasmic transport by colchicine, podophyllotoxin, and vinblastine: an effect on microtubules. Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. 253:517-527[Medline]. |
| 26. | Pena Rossi, C., M. Delcroix, I. Huitinga, A. McAllister, N. van Rooijen, E. Claassen, and M. Brahic. 1997. Role of macrophages during Theiler's virus infection. J. Virol. 71:3336-3340[Abstract]. |
| 27. |
Pevear, D. C.,
M. Calenoff,
E. Rozhon, and H. L. Lipton.
1987.
Analysis of the complete nucleotide sequence of the picornavirus Theiler's murine encephalomyelitis virus indicates that it is closely related to cardioviruses.
J. Virol.
61:1507-1516 |
| 28. | Racaniello, V. R., and R. Ren. 1994. Transgenic mice and the pathogenesis of poliomyelitis. Arch. Virol. Suppl. 9:79-86[Medline]. |
| 29. | Ren, R., and V. R. Racaniello. 1992. Poliovirus spreads from muscle to the central nervous system by neural pathways. J. Infect. Dis. 166:747-752[Medline]. |
| 30. | Simas, J. P., H. Dyson, and J. K. Fazakerley. 1995. The neurovirulent GDVII strain of Theiler's virus can replicate in glial cells. J. Virol. 69:5599-5606[Abstract]. |
| 31. |
Sun, N.,
M. D. Cassell, and S. Perlman.
1996.
Anterograde, transneuronal transport of herpes simplex virus type 1 strain H129 in the murine visual system.
J. Virol.
70:5405-5413 |
| 32. |
Takata, H.,
M. Obuchi,
J. Yamamoto,
T. Odagiri,
R. P. Roos,
H. Iizuka, and Y. Ohara.
1998.
L* protein of the DA strain of Theiler's murine encephalomyelitis virus is important for virus growth in a murine macrophage-like cell line.
J. Virol.
72:4950-4955 |
| 33. | Theiler, M. 1937. Spontaneous encephalomyelitis of mice, a new virus disease. J. Exp. Med. 55:705-719. |
| 34. |
Tyler, K. L.,
D. A. McPhee, and B. N. Fields.
1986.
Distinct pathways of viral spread in the host determined by reovirus S1 gene segment.
Science
233:770-774 |
| 35. | Wada, Y., and R. S. Fujinami. 1993. Viral infection and dissemination through the olfactory pathway and the limbic system by Theiler's virus. Am. J. Pathol. 143:221-229[Abstract]. |
| 36. | Zhou, L., X. Lin, T. J. Green, H. L. Lipton, and M. Luo. 1997. Role of sialyloligosaccharide binding in Theiler's virus persistence. J. Virol. 71:9701-9712[Abstract]. |
This article has been cited by other articles:
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| J. Bacteriol. | Mol. Cell. Biol. | Microbiol. Mol. Biol. Rev. |
|---|
| Clin. Vaccine Immunol. | ALL ASM JOURNALS |
|---|