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Journal of Virology, May 2002, p. 5082-5093, Vol. 76, No. 10
0022-538X/02/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JVI.76.10.5082-5093.2002
Copyright © 2002, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Cytopathic Killing of Peripheral Blood CD4+ T Lymphocytes by Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Appears Necrotic rather than Apoptotic and Does Not Require env
Michael J. Lenardo,1* Sara B. Angleman,1 Viengngeun Bounkeua,1 Joseph Dimas,1,
Melody G. Duvall,1,
Moses B. Graubard,1 Felicita Hornung,1,
Marianne C. Selkirk,1,|| Christina K. Speirs,1 Carol Trageser,1 Jan O. Orenstein,2 and Diane L. Bolton1
Laboratory of Immunology, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892,1
Department of Pathology, George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 200522
Received 30 October 2001/
Accepted 8 February 2002

ABSTRACT
An important unresolved issue of AIDS pathogenesis is the mechanism
of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-induced CD4
+ T-lymphocyte
destruction. We show here that HIV type 1 (HIV-1) exerts a profound
cytopathic effect upon peripheral blood CD4
+ T lymphocytes that
resembles necrosis rather than apoptosis. Necrotic cytopathology
was found with both laboratory-adapted strains and primary isolates
of HIV-1. We carefully investigated the role of
env, which has
been previously implicated in HIV cytopathicity. HIV-1 stocks
with equivalent infectivity were prepared from constructs with
either an intact or mutated
env coding region and pseudotyped
with the glycoprotein of vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV-G)
so that the HIV envelope was not rate-limiting for infection.
Infected Jurkat T cells died whether or not
env was intact;
however, the expression of
env accelerated death significantly.
The accelerated death was blocked by protease inhibitors, indicating
that it was due to reinfection by newly produced virus in
env+ cultures. Accordingly, we found no disparity in kinetics in
CD4
lo Jurkat cells. In highly infected peripheral blood T cells,
profound necrosis occurred equivalently with both
env+ and
env- stocks of HIV-1. We also found that HIV-1 cytopathicity was
undiminished by the absence of
nef. However, viral stocks made
by complementation or packaging of HIV-1 genomes with the natural
protein-coding sequences replaced by the green fluorescent protein
were highly infectious but not cytopathic. Thus,
env can accelerate
cell death chiefly as an entry function, but one or more viral
functions other than
env or
nef is essential for necrosis of
CD4
+ T cells induced by HIV-1.

INTRODUCTION
The experimental definition of viral cytopathicity leading to
the demise of the host cell was established in poliovirus (
22).
The observation that poliovirus caused a severe biochemical
derangement of the host cell machinery so that the cell would
die provided an important insight into viral pathogenesis. Infected
cell death and dysfunction are frequently associated with organ
damage and are believed to play an important part of virus-induced
disease pathology (
84). Cytopathic effects have been observed
for many viruses including the human immunodeficiency virus
(HIV) (
68). Extensive cell death after infection impeded the
initial attempts to propagate HIV in tissue culture (
68).
The cytopathic effect of HIV on T cells has been the subject of substantial investigation, and several hypotheses have been previously advanced (for reviews, see references 24, 30, and 72). A long-standing hypothesis is that HIV exerts its principal cytopathic effect indirectly on uninfected bystander cells rather than directly on infected host cells (30, 72). Cell death was proposed to occur in response to gp120 cross-linking of the CD4 protein on the bystander T cells leading either directly to apoptosis or otherwise priming the cells for apoptosis after T-cell receptor engagement (6, 25, 29, 31, 55). Such a phenomenon would implicate envelope as a central player on the proscenium of HIV type 1 (HIV-1)-induced cell death. The bystander hypothesis was prompted by early data that very few T lymphocytes in the peripheral circulation (on the order of 1/1,000 to 1/8,000) are productively infected during the period of clinical latency after HIV infection (32). Hence, the attrition of CD4+ T cells during the latent period was believed to be due to rare infected cells stimulating uninfected cells to undergo cell death. In studies of this phenomenon, however, the level of apoptosis was variable and affected both CD8 and CD4 cells (6, 20, 30, 55). Moreover, histological analyses of lymph nodes from HIV-infected individuals documented apoptosis in B cells, CD4+ T cells, and CD8+ T cells that appeared to be due to a state of general immune activation not different in character from that observed in uninfected nodes (58). The bystander death hypothesis was also weakened by later estimates of infected cells in blood and lymph node as high as 8 to 16% (24). In recent kinetic models of high cell turnover, a low steady-state level of infected cells during clinical latency is no longer incompatible with a continuous inexorable decline of CD4+ T cells caused by a direct viral cytopathic effect on infected cells (35, 85). Clearly, this is a very important area of study, and it is still under extensive investigation. The focus of this research will be on the mechanism by which HIV-1 kills infected single cells (13).
Several other hypotheses have addressed possible mechanisms of direct viral killing of infected cells. One set of hypotheses suggests that HIV induces apoptosis because fragmented DNA and other potential characteristics of apoptosis can be detected in infected cell populations (27, 34, 46, 71, 78, 92). However, such markers could not be applied quantitatively in these early studies. Attempts to identify the HIV component responsible for apoptosis have failed to reach consensus (17). Apoptosis-inducing effects have been described for env, tat, nef, vpr, and vpu (7, 15, 37, 61, 63, 89). However, much of the evidence on mediators of HIV-1-induced cell death is contradictory. For example, tat has been associated with apoptosis induction in certain studies (7, 49, 66, 70, 87) and as a protection against apoptosis in other studies (28, 54, 91). Evidence for the involvement of the Fas death receptor has been put forward but contested (1, 5, 23, 27, 56, 74, 75, 87, 90). There have also been suggestions that direct virus killing may not involve apoptosis (3, 9, 12, 43, 65, 67). The wide variability of these findings may be due in part to the fact that most studies examined only one or two biochemical features of apoptosis and employed cultures in which the infected and uninfected cells could not be readily distinguished. However, apoptosis and necrosis are known to have cellular, biochemical, and molecular differences (48, 79, 80). Thus, the crucial issue remains whether the death of peripheral blood CD4+ T cells occurred by direct viral killing and whether this death could be ascribed to an apoptotic or necrotic mechanism as previously reported.
One of the most interesting viral components implicated in HIV cytopathicity is the env gene. The involvement of env in cell death was suggested by the observation of mutations confined to the env gene that distinguished cytopathic and noncytopathic derivatives of HIV-1 (14, 26, 45, 81). Other studies suggested that env directly induces a death effect similar to apoptosis after its interaction with the CD4 molecule (19, 21, 38, 40, 44, 51, 52, 62, 73, 82, 87). The implication of env in direct cytopathicity is complicated by the fact that Env is a critical entry molecule for HIV. Thus, env mutations may alter infectivity as well as any subsequent effect of env on cellular physiology. In general, direct viral killing will be diminished if the ability of the virus to propagate is impaired. Therefore, to unambiguously identify a distinct role for env in cell death, it is necessary to establish an infection system in which the virus can productively infect in the absence of env. This can be accomplished by pseudotyping the virus with a highly efficient envelope such as the glycoprotein from vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV-G) (2, 8) so that HIV-1 env is no longer rate-limiting for entry. Such a strategy could be further strengthened by using an HIV mutant that does not encode an entry molecule so that the virus will be limited to a single round of infection. This will eliminate any contribution of env to further rounds of infection that could independently enhance the cytopathic effect on cells in the culture system. Also, this approach should allow an independent assessment of whether superinfection plays any role in the cytopathicity (10, 86). Thus, it is crucial to test the role of env by using HIV-1 that lacks env and depends upon another protein, such as VSV-G, for entry.
Although cytopathicity can encompass many forms of virus-induced cellular dysfunction, in this study we will only examine the death of cells caused by HIV. Cell death, in the broadest terms, has been described by a paradigm involving two general processes: (i) apoptosis that is "programmed" cell death involving a specific molecular pathway and (ii) necrosis or traumatic cell death which may or may not be programmed by a dedicated molecular pathway (79, 80). Apoptosis has been shown to be due to a series of biochemical pathways that are highly conserved in evolution from nematodes to humans. The pivotal event in the apoptosis program is the activation of cysteinyl aspartate-requiring proteases called caspases (60). Activation of these enzymes leads directly to the morphological hallmarks of apoptosis, which include nuclear chromatin condensation and fragmentation, shrinkage and condensation of the cytoplasm with preservation of the plasma membrane integrity, and breakdown of the cell into membrane-enclosed apoptotic "bodies" that are rapidly phagocytosed. Caspase activation also leads to characteristic biochemical changes in the cell, including the inversion of phosphatidylserine to the exterior of the cell membrane and exposure of the mitochondrial antigen recognized by the APO2.7 antibody (42). The biochemical and morphological changes of apoptosis, as well as the ultimate death of the cell can be prevented by soluble inhibitors of caspases (59). In contrast, necrosis is not prevented, and may actually be promoted under certain circumstances, by caspase inhibition (83). Necrotic cells are characterized by the rapid loss of the plasma membrane which leads to swelling, loss of isotonic balance, and massive breakup of the cell components. This is manifested as a complete dissolution of the cell into debris and release of the internal contents. Determining whether apoptosis or necrosis accounts for HIV-induced cell death is a central question in AIDS pathogenesis and should provide insights into the biochemical mechanism by which HIV infection eliminates CD4+ T lymphocytes. We therefore investigated this question in peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBLs) by using both a laboratory-adapted strain and natural isolates of HIV-1. We also assessed the role of the HIV env and nef genes in cytopathicity.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Cell lines and cell cultures.
Jurkat T lymphoma cells were maintained in RPMI complete medium
(RPMI 1640; BioWhittaker) with 10% heat-inactivated fetal calf
serum, penicillin (100 U/ml), streptomycin (100 U/ml),
L-glutamine
(2 mM), and 50 µM ß-mercaptoethanol. Jurkat
1.9 was a CD4
hi subclone from a low CD4-expressing parental
Jurkat line, Jurkat 3 (S. Angleman, D. Bolton, and M. J. Lenardo,
unpublished data). Peripheral blood T cells were prepared from
anonymous healthy, normal individuals and were obtained from
buffy coats collected by heparin-free phlebotomy in the Department
of Transfusion Medicine, Clinical Center, National Institutes
of Health (NIH). To prepare activated purified CD4
+ T cells
in early experiments, buffy coats were diluted with phosphate-buffered
saline (PBS) 1:5 and underlaid with a 1/3 volume of Ficoll-Paque
(Pharmacia). After a 15-min spin (800
x g at room temperature),
the cells remaining on the Ficoll cushion were collected and
washed three times with PBS. The lymphocytes were then resuspended
in complete medium and stimulated with 5 µg of concanavalin
A (Boehringer Mannheim) or
Phaseolus vulgaris phytohemagglutinin-L
(Sigma, St. Louis, Mo.)/ml for 48 to 72 h. Concanavalin A was
removed by treatment with 10 mg of

-methyl-mannoside (Sigma)/ml
for 30 min at 37°C and three washes with complete medium.
CD4
+ T cells were obtained by column separation (human T-cell
CD4
+ subset column kit; R&D Systems) according to the manufacturer's
recommendations. Purified CD4
+ T cells were then cultured in
complete RPMI 1640 with 100 U of interleukin-2 (IL-2 [Proleukin;
Midwest Medical, Earth City, Mo.])/ml. PBL cultures were maintained
by twice-weekly feeding. In later experiments, buffy coats diluted
with PBS were spun for 20 min instead of 15 min. The cells remaining
on the Ficoll cushion were then collected and washed once with
PBS. They were then resuspended in 10 ml of ACK lysing buffer
(Quality Biological, Inc.) for 10 min. After washing them three
times with PBS, the cells were resuspended in complete medium
and stimulated with 2 µg of phytohemagglutinin-L/ml. After
72 h, the lymphocytes were washed three times in complete RPMI
with 100 U of IL-2 (NIH, Frederick, Md.)/ml and stimulated for
24 h in complete medium containing either 100 U of IL-2/ml or
a cocktail of 100 U of IL-2, 30 U of IL-12 (PeproTech, Inc.),
and 30 U of tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-

; PeproTech, Inc.)/ml.
Before infection, the lymphocytes were depleted of CD8
+ cells
by magnetic separation by using fluorescein isothiocyanate anti-human
CD8 (PharMingen, San Diego, Calif.) and BioMag Sheep Anti-Fluorescein
(Polysciences, Inc.) to prepare CD4-enriched cultures. CD4-enriched
cultures were then maintained by daily replenishment of cytokines.
HIV stock and infections.
HIV stocks and plasmids were obtained from the NIAID AIDS Repository unless otherwise indicated. pGFP-HSA, pHIV-EGFP, and pNL-EGFP were obtained from Jacob Reiser at Louisiana State University. The env- strain of NL4-3HSA containing a filled-in NdeI site creating an early stop codon was a gift of Ned Landau (Salk Institute). HIV-1 (NL4-3HSA strain) stocks were prepared from cell-free supernatant from infected H9 T cells by using an original stock from Ned Landau (Salk Institute) or by plasmid transfection of 293T cells with either the FuGENE reagent (Boehringer Mannheim) or the ExGen 500 reagent (Fermentas) according to the manufacturers' recommendations (18, 33). Mouse heat-stable antigen (HSA) was used as a cell surface marker of provirus expression since it is readily detected by surface staining and is not expressed in human T cells. A large number of control experiments showed that the expression of HSA did not promote or impede the cytopathicity of HIV-1 (data not shown). Primary isolates were passaged no more than once before they were used for infection. VSV-G-pseudotyped viral stocks of NL4-3HSA were harvested 48 h after cotransfection of 293T cells with pLVSV-G or pCMV-VSV-G and pNL4-3HSA env+ or env- virus (2, 8, 53, 57). To increase titers in some experiments, virus supernatants (1 ml) were centrifuged at top speed in a microcentrifuge for 1 h, and the bottom 100 µl was used to resuspend the virus on the bottom of the tube and then used for infection. Virus titers were assessed by the MAGI assay by quantitating the number of cells expressing ß-galactosidase (69) or by assessing the multiplicity of infection (MOI) by Poisson distribution (11). In early experiments, infections were carried out with a pellet of 0.5 x 106 to 1.0 x 106 CD4+ T cells or Jurkat lymphoma cells in 2063 polypropylene tubes (Falcon) inoculated with 100 µl of HIV-1 (3.8 x 105 infectious units/ml) stock in 200 µl of medium with 1 µg of Polybrene/ml. Samples were centrifuged overnight at 800 x g at room temperature and then resuspended in 5 ml of complete medium in T25 flasks. Cultures were maintained at 5 x 105 to 10 x 105 cells/ml in IL-2 by refeeding as needed. In later experiments, infections were carried out in Biocoat human fibronectin-coated 12-well plates (Becton Dickinson, Franklin Lakes, N.J.). Next, 106 CD4-enriched PBLs or Jurkat lymphoma cells were suspended in complete medium in each well. In PBL infections, the medium was supplemented with 100 U of IL-2 and 5 µg of Polybrene/ml or 100 U of IL-2, 30 U of IL-12, 30 U of TNF-
, and 5 µg of Polybrene/ml. The total volume in each sample well was 3 ml. After the addition of viral stock, the plates were centrifuged at 800 x g for 30 min and then incubated at 37°C. Cultures were maintained by daily cytokine feeding. In experiments with indinavir (IND; AIDS Repository), a 10 µM concentration was added to the appropriate samples prior to centrifugation, after centrifugation, and daily throughout the course of the infection.
Assays for cell viability and quantitation of infection.
HIV-1 cytopathicity and cell death was assessed by flow cytometric forward scatter-side scatter (FSC-SSC) profiles obtained on a FACSCalibur flow cytometer (Becton Dickinson) and fluorescent profiles of cells stained with 1:200-diluted anti-mouse HSA phycoerythrin (PE) (CD24; PharMingen) daily throughout the course of infection. Quantitation of the level of infection was also carried out with intracellular HIV-1 p24 staining. Cells were fixed by using the Cytofix/Cytoperm kit (PharMingen) according to manufacturer's instructions and then stained with an appropriate dilution of anti-p24 PE antibody, KC57-RD1 (Coulter), at 4°C for 30 min, washed twice, and analyzed by flow cytometry. Heat-shocked necrotic control samples were prepared by heating at 56°C for 10 to 30 min. Flow cytometry results were analyzed by FlowJo (Tree Star, Inc., San Carlos, Calif.) or CellQuest software (Becton Dickinson). Comparison of infected-cell death by using env+ versus env- strains of NL4-3HSA in CD4-enriched PBLs was performed by first gating on the HSA-positive population and then determining the fraction of viable cells within this population.
Apoptosis assays.
Infected and mock-infected CD4+ T cells or Jurkat cells were treated with 1 µg of staurosporine (Alexis Biochemicals, San Diego, Calif.)/ml for various times. Annexin V binding was used to measure phosphatidylserine exposure on the outer leaflet of the plasma membrane by incubating 106 cells in 1:30-diluted fluoresceinated Annexin V (PharMingen) in Annexin V binding buffer (10 mM HEPES-NaOH, pH 7.4; 150 mM NaCl; 5 mM KCl; 1 mM MgCl2; 2 mM CaCl2) for 15 min. Cells were washed and analyzed by flow cytometry. Exposure of the 7A6 mitochondrial membrane antigen was measured by using the APO2.7 antibody labeled with PE (Immunotech/Coulter, Marseilles, France) according to the manufacturer's instructions. Briefly, 106 cells were permeabilized in 100 µg of digitonin/ml in PBSF buffer (PBS with 2.5% [vol/vol] heat-inactivated FCS and 0.1% NaN3) for 20 min on ice, washed, incubated in 1:5 diluted APO2.7-PE for 15 min at room temperature, and washed again prior to analysis on a FACSCalibur cytometer. To exclude nonspecific binding of the staining reagents to dead or necrotic cells, all quantitative flow cytometric analyses were gated on a "viable" FSC-SSC population such that the data reflect only cells that are viable or recently committed to undergo apoptosis.
Microscopic analysis of cell death.
Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) was performed on suspensions of cells fixed in neutral buffered glutaraldehyde and gelled in agarose. Postfixation was carried out with osmium tetroxide, followed by dehydration in graded ethanol and propylene oxide and embedding in Spurr's epoxy. One-micron semithin plastic sections were cut and stained with the combined methylene blue, Azure II, basic fuschin stain for light microscope selection of blocks to be thinned for TEM. Thin sections were stained with uranyl acetate and lead citrate and viewed on a LEO EM10 transmission electron microscope at 60 kV. The number of apoptotic, necrotic, and normal cells was assessed by inspection by an evaluator unaware of the identity of the samples. Controls of necrotic or apoptotic cells, generated by heat-shock or staurosporine treatment, respectively, were used as the basis of characteristic morphology.

RESULTS
HIV-1-induced cytopathicity can be quantitatively attributed to necrosis and not apoptosis.
To establish an in vitro system, we infected cultures of activated
purified CD4
+ T lymphocytes with the NL4-3
HSA strain of HIV-1
that harbors the coding sequence of the mouse HSA in place of
the
nef gene (
18,
33). This allowed us to clearly distinguish
infected from uninfected cells by flow cytometry and examine
the cytopathic effect on each one independently. This technique
has been used successfully by other groups (
17,
32). When we
infected CD4
+ T lymphocytes with HIV-1, we observed a progressive
loss of viability that was initiated at about day 4 and continued
over 10 days of infection (Fig.
1). This loss of viability was
only observed in cultures containing cells expressing the HSA
marker (Fig.
1, inset). In these experiments, we consistently
observed an initial high level of HSA that reached a nadir at
ca. 75 h and then increased until the end of the experiment.
Biphasic expression of HSA was due to the initial passive transfer
of the protein from virus fusion, followed by a second wave
of expression (starting at 75 h in these culture conditions)
from the integrated provirus (D. Bolton, B.-I. Hahn, and M.
J. Lenardo, unpublished results). Thus, a lethal cytopathic
effect was readily observed under our culture conditions that
correlated with expression of the HIV genome. We observed essentially
no death of uninfected bystander cells or even cells with low-level
provirus expression (see below). It was notable that early in
infection (within the first 2 days), there was a loss of viability
of <20% evident in the uninfected (mock) and infected cultures
alike. Thus, despite the high level of virus-cell interactions,
as indicated by the high level of HSA passively acquired by
the virion-cell fusion in ca. 80% of the cells, there was no
death triggered. This suggests that the previously proposed
mechanisms for T-cell death in response to extensive gp120-CD4
interactions do not appear to account for the cytopathic effect
we observed (
6,
81).
In a separate study of the cytopathic effect of HIV-1 on T-cell
tumor lines, we observed that there was no consistent display
of apoptosis markers and that virally induced cell death was
not dependent upon caspase activation (
11). We therefore examined
two early hallmarks of apoptosis in infected peripheral blood
CD4
+ T cells: Annexin V, which binds to cells that externally
display phosphatidylserine, and the exposure of the mitochondrial
antigen recognized by APO2.7 (Fig.
2). We found that in highly
infected CD4
+ T-cell cultures in which the loss of viable cells
was substantial, only modest levels of phosphatidylserine exposure
(top panels) or APO2.7 (bottom panels) were observed even when
a striking cell loss was observed. In contrast, dramatic increases
in these markers were seen when the apoptosis inducer staurosporine
was added to either infected or uninfected cultures. Similar
results were obtained with an agonistic anti-Fas antibody (data
not shown). We also observed similar results with Annexin V
and APO2.7 in tumor cell lines (
11).
The difference between apoptosis and necrosis was originally
based on morphological distinctions, and one of the best tools
for characterizing these modes of death remains morphological
analysis such as those done by TEM (Fig.
3) (
88). We observed
that there was little apoptosis visible in the uninfected (Fig.
3A) or infected samples (Fig.
3C). Rather, in the HIV-infected
cultures, we observed mostly highly fragmented cells that were
swollen and had lost integrity of the plasma membrane, resembling
a necrotic form of cell death (
41) (panels C and D). In some
of the corpses of infected cells, mature virus particles could
be seen within the necrotic debris (Fig.
3C, inset, arrowhead).
In contrast, treatment of the samples for several hours with
staurosporine caused the emergence of a clear apoptosis phenotype
in uninfected controls or virus-infected samples (panels B and
D). Apoptotic features included the compaction and margination
of chromatin to form pyknotic nuclei, condensed but otherwise
intact cytoplasm, and the formation of membrane-enclosed apoptotic
bodies (Fig.
3B, arrowheads). These characteristics differed
dramatically from normal cells, which remained intact and exhibited
open reticular chromatin (Fig.
3B, arrows). Although not entirely
absent, apoptotic features were not prominent in a large variety
of samples of CD4
+ T cells undergoing death after HIV infection.
To quantify these observations, we photographed a number of
sections at low magnification and scored a large number of individual
cells for apoptotic, necrotic, or normal morphology (Fig.
4).
These data revealed that a preponderance of apoptotic cells
was only seen upon staurosporine treatment in either uninfected
or infected cells. In contrast, virus infection dramatically
increased the number of necrotic cells but not the number of
apoptotic cells. Notably, staurosporine also significantly increased
the number of necrotic cells in both uninfected and infected
cultures. This likely results from apoptotic cells undergoing
secondary necrosis, since there is no phagocytic removal of
the apoptotic cells in this culture system (
36). In addition,
staurosporine and other apoptosis inducers may exacerbate necrosis
induced by viral infection, as has been observed with anti-Fas
treatment of HIV-infected Jurkat cells (
11). Taken together,
these data strongly suggest that necrosis quantitatively accounted
for the majority of cytopathic death due to infection of CD4
+ T cells with the NL4-3
HSA virus.
Natural isolates of HIV-1 also manifest a necrotic cytopathicity.
To determine whether these results were also characteristic
of natural infections, we examined infections of both peripheral
CD4
+ T lymphocytes and Jurkat 1.9 T cells with primary isolates
of HIV-1. After the initial infection, we carried out flow cytometry
on the culture to determine the level of cell viability and
fraction of provirus-expressing cells, as indicated by intracytoplasmic
staining for p24. At day 11, we harvested the culture and carried
out microscopic analyses to determine the number of cells manifesting
an apoptotic, necrotic, or normal morphology. The results of
the microscopic analysis were then compared to the level of
infection at days 5, 10, and 15 (Fig.
5). We found that cell
death was positively correlated with isolates that spread rapidly
and infected most of the cells in the culture. Also, the loss
of normal viable cells was more dramatic in Jurkat cells (right
panel) in which the virus infection was greater than in peripheral
CD4
+ T cells (left panel). The great majority of dead cells
observed with all isolates mostly manifested a necrotic phenotype,
and only a minor fraction of apoptotic cells were seen. In the
control infections of CD4
+ T cells and Jurkat cells, cultures
1 and 5, respectively, the cultures contained primarily normal
cells with only a small number of adventitious apoptotic or
necrotic cells. In the case of the infections of CD4
+ T cells,
we found that the cultures exhibited low levels of infection
that peaked on day 10 and were extinguished by day 15. None
of the primary isolates gave strong infections and the infection
was lost after 2 weeks due to the death of infected cells. Infections
with the primary isolates using Jurkat 1.9 T cells (that had
been selected for high expression of CD4) gave a much greater
fraction of infected cells, and this occurred with more rapid
kinetics, with the most robust infection peaking as early as
day 5. As a consequence, in each of the infected Jurkat cultures
there was florid necrotic cell death with a large loss of healthy
cells compared to the uninfected control. We conclude that cytopathicity
is associated with primary isolates of HIV-1 and correlates
with the level of infection; moreover, the cytopathic component
of the virus induces cell death by necrosis rather than apoptosis.
Env is not required for HIV-1-induced death of Jurkat cells.
To investigate the role of the envelope in HIV-1-induced cytopathic
death, we compared NL4-3
HSA with an intact
env gene to an Env-deficient
version of NL4-3
HSA containing an early stop codon in the
env gene. We pseudotyped the virions for both genomes with the VSV-G
protein to ensure that the HIV-1 envelope was not rate limiting
for virus entry. This allowed us to test whether Env had a direct
toxic effect in the infected target cells independent of its
role in virus entry. We infected Jurkat 1.9 T cells with either
HIV-1 NL4-3
HSA env+ or
env- strains at a comparable MOI as determined
by the MAGI assay (Fig.
6A and B [left panel]). Within 5 days,
essentially all of the infected cells had died, independent
of Env expression. However, the presence of Env clearly provided
an acceleration of the rate of death. At day 1 postinfection,
we found that the cells infected with either
env+ or
env- virus
were highly infected, with similar viability. By day 2, only
35% of cells infected with
env+ virus remained viable, whereas
cells infected with
env- virus were still 64% viable. Ultimately,
all viability was lost by day 3 in the
env+ culture compared
to day 5 in the
env- culture (Fig.
6A, right panels, and data
not shown). The mock-infected cells remained >86% viable
throughout the experiment. We verified through other experiments
(data not shown) that the
env+ virus caused a loss of viability
ca. 1 to 2 days sooner than the
env- virus. Moreover, we could
not attribute the death induced by the
env- NL4-3
HSAvirus to
the VSV-G coat since pseudotypes with Mokola virus, pseudorabies
virus, or amphotropic murine leukemia virus coats also mediated
cytopathic infections with the
env- NL4-3
HSA genome (data not
shown). It was also notable that the cells in the "dead" gate
for infected cultures in these experiments contained only highly
infected cells, indicating that only infected cells and not
bystander cells were killed (Fig.
6C). Thus, Env appears not
to be required for direct HIV-1-induced cytopathic death in
infected cells.
In an independent experiment, we found that the disparity between
NL4-3
HSA env+ and
env- HIV-1 was eliminated when a CD4
lo cell
line, Jurkat 3, was infected, indicating CD4 dependence (Fig.
6B, right panel). Note that in this experiment, more virus was
used so that the kinetics of death for both
env+ virus and
env- was accelerated (Fig.
6B, compare left and right panels). Therefore,
the difference could be due to the ability of the
env+ strain
of HIV-1 to generate infectious virions that could reinfect
cells in the culture, implying that Env could have its effect
solely as a viral entry function. Consistent with this interpretation,
we found that
env+ virus gave significantly higher overall virus
expression, as indicated by the cell of HSA on infected cells,
than the
env- virus (compare HSA levels on day 1 and day 2 for
E+ and E- in panel A). Also, the NL4-3
HSA virus lacks
nef and
therefore causes a slower and less-complete downmodulation of
CD4, thereby permitting reinfection (data not shown). To investigate
this possibility, we used the protease inhibitor, IND, to prevent
the maturation of noninfectious to infectious viral particles.
One day after infection all of the samples were already highly
infected, although they showed similar viability (Fig.
7). By
day two, the
env+ virus-infected cells died at a much faster
rate than those infected with the
env- virus. However, the addition
of IND to the
env+ culture completely eliminated this advantage
over the
env- culture. A similar trend continued throughout
the course of the infection. Cultures in which IND was added
to Env
- infections or uninfected cells showed no effect of the
drug on cell viability. Lastly, further control experiments
in which we introduced the plasmids containing the HIV-1 NL4-3
HSA Env
+ or Env
- genomes into the Jurkat 1.9 T cells by electroporation
revealed a greater loss of viability when Env was present and
promoted reinfection (data not shown). Taken together, these
results lead to the important conclusion that Env is not required
for a direct cytopathic effect but rather promotes cytopathicity
by increasing the level of virus expression by facilitating
viral entry.
HIV-1 induces death of CD4-enriched PBLs in the absence of Env.
We further tested the physiological relevance of our observations
of Env as a viral entry factor, but not cytopathic factor, by
comparing infections of CD4-enriched PBLs with the
env+ and
env- NL4-3
HSA mutants pseudotyped with VSV-G protein (Fig.
8A).
We observed similar levels of death in PBLs highly infected
with either the
env+ NL4-3
HSA or the
env- NL4-3
HSA mutant when
HSA expression was matched between samples. As a further control,
we also used HIV-1 NL4-3
HSA env mutant pseudotyped with both
VSV-G and an HXB2 HIV-1 envelope and found no significant increase
in cytopathicity. Furthermore, when we gated on the most highly
infected cells over the course of the infections as indicated
by HSA expression, we found a striking loss of viability for
both the
env+ and
env- viral stocks (Fig.
8B). Hence, the dramatic
cytopathic effect observed in this in vitro system was not dependent
on the presence of HIV-1 Env.
To rule out spurious toxicity of the VSV-G protein and to determine
whether any viral protein of HIV-1 was necessary for the cytopathic
death, Jurkat 1.9 T cells were infected with three different
NL4-3 derivatives in which green fluorescent protein (GFP) replaced
the natural viral proteins (
16,
57). We found no appreciable
loss of viability (Fig.
9). All of the genomes were unable to
express any of the normal HIV-1 viral proteins, with the exception
of pHIV-EGFP, which expresses the viral regulatory proteins,
Tat, Vpu, and Rev. GFP expression was detected in the viable
cell population (Fig.
9, inset), indicating that the cells were
highly and comparably infected but exhibited none of the cytopathic
effects observed in cells infected with wild-type and
env- virus
(Fig.
6 and
7 and data not shown). Therefore, HIV-1 protein(s)
expressed from the provirus, other than Env, are necessary for
the observed cytopathic effect of HIV-1 in the infected T cells
in this culture system.

DISCUSSION
How are CD4
+ T cells depleted? This question is central to our
understanding of the pathogenesis of HIV-1 infections. A great
deal of experimental work has been directed at this question,
and a plethora of different models have emerged (
4,
72,
73).
As better techniques have become available, it has been possible
to address this issue with greater precision. It is clear from
our studies that HIV-1 is a highly cytopathic virus for its
natural host, CD4
+ T lymphocytes. In well-controlled studies
of CD4
+ T lymphocytes in vitro in which infected and uninfected
cells could be readily distinguished by flow cytometry, we found
no evidence of bystander killing, a finding that is in agreement
with previous in vitro studies (
27). Thus, our efforts focused
on how HIV-1 causes a direct cytopathic effect on single infected
cells, as emphasized previously by Sodroski and coworkers (
13).
If bystander death has an important impact in vivo, then it
may result from the general state of immune activation or involve
other factors that are not present in our in vitro culture system
(
58). Although many studies suggest that apoptosis is responsible
for CD4
+ T-lymphocyte death, we could not find evidence to support
this contention. Rather, as previously suggested, we find that
the T-cell death induced by both laboratory-adapted strains
and natural isolates had hallmarks of necrosis rather than apoptosis
(
43,
65). This was especially evident from TEM studies which
showed that HIV-1 caused complete dissolution of the cell without
the classic features of apoptosis. This finding was surprising
to us because of the number of studies that document apoptotic
changes in HIV-1-infected cultures. The previous findings may
be due, at least in part, to the fact that HIV-1 infection damages
the cell and makes it more susceptible to apoptosis induced
by other agents under some conditions (
11,
47,
50,
64). It therefore
becomes crucial to demonstrate that the apoptosis observed quantitatively
accounts for the loss of viable cells due to infection. Such
evidence has not been previously reported, and our data now
indicate that necrosis rather than apoptosis quantitatively
accounts for the level of cytopathic death which directly relates
to the level of HIV-1 infection in T-cell cultures.
The predominance of "necrotic" death is likely to be relevant in vivo since the same results were obtained with laboratory-adapted HIV-1 strains, as well as natural isolates, in both Jurkat T lymphoma cells and CD4+ T lymphocytes. However, since precise molecular mechanisms of necrotic death have not been defined, terming the death "necrosis" becomes a diagnosis of exclusion for this type of viral cytopathicity. Nonetheless, HIV-induced death is not programmed in the sense of triggering death through caspases since features of this type of death were lacking. Thus, caspase inhibitors would not be therapeutically useful for preventing T-cell loss in HIV-1 infection and could even be harmful since they can promote necrosis under certain conditions (83). Rather, HIV-1 inflicts trauma on the cells that apparently causes a vital component of the cell to fail, thereby leading to dissolution of the cells. Identifying the virus function that mediates cellular damage will be crucial for understanding this event.
A prominent candidate for the mediator of cell death has been considered to be the Env protein. A variety of previous studies have provided evidence of its participation in the death process mainly by showing that alterations of the env gene diminish the cytopathicity of HIV-1 (14, 26, 45, 81). However, the interpretation of these experiments hinges critically on eliminating any effect that env alterations could have on the process of infection. For example, subtle changes in the envelope protein that affect viral entry might decrease the efficiency of viral spreading throughout the culture, resulting in less observed death. We sought to avoid this complication by employing the highly efficient VSV-G coat protein in an infection procedure in which essentially all cells are infected in a single step. Under these conditions, HIV-1 Env is not rate limiting for initial virus entry. The efficiency of viral fusion and, ultimately, productive infection were readily assessed on a cell-by-cell basis by flow cytometric analysis of both surface HSA encoded in place of nef and intracytoplasmic staining for p24. In this system, there were apparently no direct toxic effects of Env-CD4 interactions, which have been previously implicated in uninfected bystander cell death (72, 73). Since we use a high MOI, this type of indirect killing would likely occur during or immediately after adsorption, and yet there was no significant early mortality. Most importantly, cell killing did not differ between env+ and env- viruses. Therefore, although gp160 can apparently induce apoptosis and have other injurious effects on T cells in certain contexts, under conditions of actual virus infection in our culture system, it was clearly dispensable.
The involvement of superinfection or other envelope-receptor interactions have been proposed as essential mechanisms of cytopathicity for both human and nonhuman retroviruses (73, 77). Comparing the pseudotyped env+ and env- viruses provided a well-controlled test of whether the Env protein has a directly cytopathic effect in the infected cells. Previous work used env mutants that were not totally innocuous in their effects on infectivity, and the effect of pseudotyping was not tested (14, 26, 45, 81). Our data show that the level of infection is an important determinant of the degree of cytopathicity (Fig. 1 and 5). Hence, even subtle effects on the infectivity of the virions could have indirect confounding effects on the level of cell death. In fact, this may be the major explanation for why previous analyses that have implicated Env in the cytopathic effect differ from our results. In the present experiments, the rate-limiting step to entry is no longer the HIV envelope, since we obtained high-titer pseudotyped viral stocks irrespective of whether the env gene was mutated or intact. Also, since the VSV-G coat was supplied in trans (as opposed to being encoded in the viral genome), the infection was one round for the env- virus stocks. Hence, the effects on cytopathicity could only have been due to provirally expressed proteins in cells that had been infected during a single round. Single-round infection with the env- virus also provided a convincing approach to addressing the potential involvement of superinfection or syncytia to the HIV-1 death effect. We found that only viruses with intact env could form syncytia, which was most apparent when infecting adherent cells such as MAGI cells (data not shown). The env- virus also failed to cause reinfection after the first round, although the pseudotyped virus with intact env was capable of additional rounds of infection. The inability of the env- virus to cause syncytia or carry out multiple rounds of infection and superinfection did not prevent its cytopathic effect. Thus, the evidence is compelling that superinfection, reinfection, or syncytium formation is not necessary for the cytopathic effect of HIV-1 in this in vitro culture system, although reinfection hastens cellular demise. It remains to be seen whether other roles for env in cytopathicity may emerge as important for pathogenesis in whole-animal infections.
Another point that our experiments address is whether nef is directly involved in T-cell killing (39). Nef is an enigmatic protein that may have several functions in the life cycle of primate lentiviruses (76). In our experiment, the HSA gene replaced the nef coding sequence in the NL4-3HSA virus so there was no expression of the Nef protein. Both infectivity and cytopathicity were not substantially different from other HIV-1 strains that had an intact nef gene (data not shown). Thus, we could find no evidence for a requirement for Nef in cytopathicity. Nevertheless, replacing all HIV-encoded native viral functions with GFP rendered the viral genome noncytopathic, indicating that HIV encodes a cytopathic function. Since these GFP-bearing HIV strains were also VSV-G pseudotyped, this would eliminate any possibility that the VSV-G coat protein accounted for the cytopathic effects of the env+ or env- NL4-3HSA viruses. Taken together, the results suggest that one or more virus function(s) other than the env or nef are essential for a direct nonapoptotic cytopathic death of cultured CD4+ T lymphocytes caused by HIV-1.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank Ned Landau, Theresa Gurney, Fabio Candotti, and Jacob
Reiser for plasmids, cells, and advice during the initiation
of this project. We thank Anthony Fauci and members of his laboratory
for use of P3 research facilities and for helpful advice and
encouragement. We are also grateful to John Coffin, Eric Freed,
Steve Hughes, and Malcolm Martin for advice and assistance;
Francis Chan, Richard Siegel, Hyung Chun, and Lixin Zheng for
helpful insights and inspiring discussions; and Keiko Sakai
for a critical reading of the manuscript.
D.L.B. was a participant in the FAES (NIH)-Johns Hopkins University Cooperative Graduate Program in Biomedical Sciences.

FOOTNOTES
* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Laboratory of Immunology, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bldg. 10, Rm. 11N311, 10 Center Dr., MSC 1892, Bethesda, MD 20892-1892. Phone: (301) 496-6754. Fax: (301) 480-7352. E-mail:
Lenardo{at}nih.gov.

Present address: The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX 78229. 
Present address: Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO 63110. 
Present address: Department of Genetics and Microbiology, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland. 
|| Present address: Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. 

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Journal of Virology, May 2002, p. 5082-5093, Vol. 76, No. 10
0022-538X/02/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JVI.76.10.5082-5093.2002
Copyright © 2002, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
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