The Wistar Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104
Received 18 July 2002/ Accepted 11 October 2002
| ABSTRACT |
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| INTRODUCTION |
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IE1 of MCMV is phosphorylated, with an apparent molecular weight of 89,000 (31), and is the most abundant viral protein of the immediate-early phase. It has been characterized to have the same general molecular structure as IE1 of HCMV, but IE1 of MCMV has no amino acid similarity with IE1 of HCMV except for a stretch in the Glu-rich region (19, 20). Although IE1 proteins are necessary for the production of early proteins, in transfected cells, IE1 cannot activate the MCMV early gene promoter e1. It requires IE3, the equivalent of the HCMV ie2 gene product (6). In the absence of IE1, MCMV replication is markedly restricted.
To effect productive infection with virus devoid of IE1, multiple hits appear to be necessary (15), suggesting that IE1 is not essential but enhances early protein synthesis through its effect on the host cell. IE1 of MCMV has a domain homologous to one in histone 2B, but a different binding region interacts with cellular histones (33). Binding to cellular histones is quite avid, and no association of IE1 with cellular DNA in dividing cells could be detected. However, in vitro, a domain different from the H2B-like domain has been identified that binds without sequence specificity to DNA (34).
Expression of IE1 is under the control of the major immediate-early promoter, a large and complex enhancer sequence that can bind to a variety of activators and repressors, all of which are nuclear transcription factors. The role of these transcription factors in viral infection remains unclear, although recent studies point to the importance of the interaction between repressors and the major immediate-early promoter in CMV infection. For example, it was found that all the repressors capable of binding with the major immediate-early promoter are preferentially expressed in undifferentiated cells which are resistant to HCMV replication (30). Also, retinoic acid treatment of undifferentiated cells before but not after infection renders these cells permissive (30), suggesting that once the genome is repressed, removal of the repressors does not reactivate it. In addition, trichostatin-A treatment to inhibit the nuclear repressor histone deacetylase (HDAC) results in the release of infectious viruses from latently infected NT2 cells, suggesting a role for HDAC in maintaining suppression of competent viral genomes (35).
Herpesviruses begin their reproductive cycle at nuclear domain 10 (ND10) (18, 27), supramolecular aggregates of various proteins that appear as 0.3- to 1-µm nuclear structures upon immunostaining of its constitutive proteins promyelocytic leukemia protein (PML), Sp100, and Daxx, all of which are repressive and can be upregulated by interferon (8, 9, 14, 16, 24, 38). PML is considered to have suppressive activity on transcription (21, 25, 40, 46, 47). The transcriptional suppression by Daxx is supported by its interaction with Pax3 and HDAC (25, 26). The herpesviruses have evolved genes that destroy or disperse this nuclear structure, and in the absence of such genes, the reproductive success of the virus is dramatically reduced.
Immediate-early proteins that disperse ND10, such as ICP0 for herpes simplex virus type 1 (13, 28) and IE1 for HCMV (1, 22, 45), are considered transactivators because they augment or enhance the transcription and/or viral protein synthesis of the early genes. Such transactivation might reflect enhancement of viral and host transcription to benefit the viral replicative program or to inhibit any host defenses (27). In the case of herpes simplex virus type 1, ICP0 appears to induce the hydrolysis of PML and other ND10 proteins by a ubiquitination process based on the E3-like properties of the ICP0 RING finger domain (12). In the case of HCMV IE1, ND10 destruction has been suggested to come about by binding of IE1 to PML (1).
HCMV IE1 is produced in substantially larger quantities than IE2 from the same transcript through differential splicing. Because high concentrations of IE1 do not appear to be required for transactivation of a few viral genomes and genes or for the potential activation of host genes, we asked whether one mechanism for IE1-based success in viral replication might be the repression of a host defense. The possibility for a nucleus-based innate defense might lie in the ND10-associated proteins because PML, Daxx, and Sp100 are thought to represent repressors and they can be upregulated by interferon (8, 9, 16, 24, 38). The basic hypothesis to be tested, therefore, is whether IE1 functions to antagonize cellular defenses by rendering ineffective certain host-repressive proteins.
In this study, we investigated nuclear localization and molecular interaction between MCMV IE1 and host nuclear repressors, including ND10-associated proteins Daxx and PML and the Daxx-interacting histone deacetylase HDAC-2, during acute infection to determine whether the cell has an innate mechanism to suppress productive infection. We found evidence for a single mechanism, binding of host repressor proteins with IE1, that results in two competing processes, viral repression and viral activation, depending on the amount of IE1 produced in a given infected cell.
| MATERIALS AND METHODS |
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IE1 MCMV) were kindly provided by M. Messerle; in the
IE1 genome, exon 4 of ie1 was completely removed, and exon 3 was fused to exon 5 (M. Messerle, personal communication). Cells were infected when 80% confluent with virus at a multiplicity of infection of 1 PFU/cell. In experiments to assess the effect of trichostatin-A on viral infection, cells were treated with the HDAC inhibitor for 2 h before infection. Effect of trichostatin-A on MCMV infection in MEF. MEF cells were seeded in 12-well plates. When the cells reached confluence, one plate of MEF cells was treated with 50 ng of trichostatin-A per ml for 2 h, and another remained untreated as control. Cells were infected with wild-type MCMV at multiplicity of infection of 1. After 2 h of adsorption, unadsorbed virus was removed by washing twice with Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium and adding new Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium containing 5% fetal calf serum. For the trichostatin-A treatment plate, the medium contained 50 ng of trichostatin-A per ml. Cells and supernatant were collected after washing and at days 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. After three freeze-thaw cycles, the cellular debris was removed by centrifugation, and the supernatant was kept at -70°C for detection of virus titers by plaque assay in MEF.
Antibodies and plasmids. Mouse cell ND10-associated proteins were visualized with the following antibodies: rabbit serum R14 produced against the N-terminal half of PML, monoclonal antibody 116 against PML (S. Lowe; Cold Spring Harbor), rabbit antibodies against Daxx (Santa Cruz Biotechnology, Inc., Santa Cruz, Calif.). Rabbit antibody against HDAC-2 was purchased from Zymed Laboratory Inc. (South San Francisco, Calif.), and the acetylhistone H3(Lys23) antibodies were from Cell Signaling Technologies (Beverly, Mass.). The monoclonal antibody against tubulin was from Sigma Co. (St. Louis, Mo.). The monoclonal antibodies against MCMV IE1 and E1 and plasmid pp89UC, containing all introns and exons of ie1 under the control of the major immediate-early promoter, were generous gifts from M. Messerle.
Immunohistochemistry. The localization of ND10 by immunohistochemistry has been described (39). Briefly, 24 h after seeding cells, coverslips were washed twice with phosphate-buffered saline, fixed in 1% paraformaldehyde for 10 min at room temperature, washed again twice with phosphate-buffered saline and permeabilized with 0.2% Triton X-100 on ice for 20 min. Primary antibody was added for 30 min at room temperature, and cells were washed twice with phosphate-buffered saline before addition of secondary antibody labeled with Texas Red, indodicarbocyanine (blue), or fluorescein isothiocyanate (green) of either anti-rabbit or anti-mouse immunoglobulin G for another 30 min at room temperature. After washing with phosphate-buffered saline, cells were stained with Hoechst 33258.
Immunoblot analysis. Immunoblot analysis was performed to detect proteins by loading 10 to 20 µg in each lane for sodium dodecyl sulfate-7.5% polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE). After electrophoresis, proteins were transferred to nitrocellulose membranes (Amersham Inc., Piscataway, N.J.) and blocked with 5% nonfat milk for 60 min at room temperature. Membranes were incubated at 4°C overnight with primary antibody, followed by incubation with a horseradish peroxidase-coupled secondary antibody (Amersham Inc.) and detection with enhanced chemiluminescence (Pierce, Rockford, Ill.) according to standard methods. Membranes were stripped with stripping buffer (100 mM ß-mercaptoethanol, 2% SDS, 62.5 mM Tris-HCl [pH 6.8]), washed with phosphate-buffered saline-0.1% Tween 20, and used to assay for additional proteins.
Preparation of nuclear extracts. Nuclear extracts were obtained essentially as described before (3). Briefly, monolayer cells were washed with phosphate-buffered saline once and scraped into fresh Eppendorf tubes. Cell pellets were resuspended in cold buffer A (10 mM HEPES-KOH [pH 7.9] at 4°C, 1.5 mM MgCl2, 10 mM KCl, 0.5 mM dithiothreitol, 0.2 mM phenylmethylsulfonyl fluoride) and incubated at 4°C for 10 min. After centrifugation, pellets were resuspended in cold buffer C (20 mM HEPES-KOH [pH 7.9], 25% glycerol, 420 mM NaCl, 1.5 mM MgCl2, 0.2 mM EDTA, 0.5 mM dithiothreitol, 0.2 mM phenylmethylsulfonyl fluoride) by vortexing and incubated at 4°C for 30 min. Clarified extracts were transferred to fresh tubes and stored at -70°C until use.
Coimmunoprecipitation. Antibodies were coupled to Dynabead M-450 paramagnetic beads (Dynal, Oslo, Norway) coated with anti-rabbit or anti-mouse IgG as described by the manufacturer. After washing with phosphate-buffered saline-0.1% bovine serum albumin, beads were incubated overnight at 4°C with clarified extracts, washed again in phosphate-buffered saline-0.1% bovine serum albumin, and resuspended in a mixture of phosphate-buffered saline and 2x Laemmli buffer (20 µl of each). After heating at 95°C for 5 min, beads were removed by centrifugation, and supernatants were analyzed by SDS-PAGE and immunoblotting.
Chromatin immunoprecipitation assay. Adherent cells were washed twice with phosphate-buffered saline and incubated in 1% formaldehyde for 30 min at room temperature for DNA-protein cross-linking. After addition of glycine (0.125 M final concentration), cells were incubated for 5 min, washed twice in phosphate-buffered saline, scraped off, and resuspended in immunoprecipitation buffer (20 mM Tris [pH 8.0], 0.1% deoxycholate, 0.5% Triton X-100, 2 mM EDTA, 150 mM NaCl, 1 mM phenylmethylsulfonyl fluoride). Cells were sonicated six times at 30% output for 10 s to yield 200- to 1,000-bp DNA fragments. After centrifugation in a Sorvall RT7 centrifuge (4,000 rpm for 20 min), antibodies against Daxx (Santa Cruz; 5 µg/ml) along with bovine serum albumin (100 µg/ml) were added to the supernatant and incubated overnight at 4°C. An untreated aliquot of each supernatant served as a control for input DNA.
In parallel, protein G beads (Amersham Pharmacia Biotech, N.J.) were washed twice with immunoprecipitation buffer and incubated overnight at 4°C in immunoprecipitation buffer containing 0.5 mg of bovine serum albumin and 0.5 mg of heat-denatured salmon sperm DNA per ml. Beads were washed twice with immunoprecipitation buffer, incubated with the antibody-containing supernatants for 2 h at 4°C, and retrieved by centrifugation, followed by sequential washing with immunoprecipitation buffer which contained 600 mM NaCl, LiCl buffer (10 mM Tris [pH 8.0], 0.1% deoxycholate, 0.5% Triton X-100, 5 mM EDTA, 0.5% Nonidet P40, 250 mM LiCl, 1 mM phenylmethylsulfonyl fluoride), and TE (Tris-EDTA) buffer.
To purify DNA from the beads and from untreated control supernatants, samples were supplemented with 1% SDS, incubated overnight at 65°C, extracted with phenol-chloroform, and ethanol, precipitated. Samples were analyzed by PCR with 30 cycles of 94°C, 56°C, and 72°C for 1 min each. Primers used for the MCMV ie2 promoter were 5'-GGC TCC GTT CAC CCG CTC GT-3' (sense) and 5'-TAA AGG CCA TTG AGT CAC CA-3' (antisense); for the MCMV ie1/ie3 promoter, the primers were 5'-GTA CAA AAG GTC AAT AGG GG-3' (sense) and 5'-GTA CCG ACG CTG GTC GCG CC-3' (antisense). PCR products were visualized on 2% agarose gels.
Preparation of HDAC complex. HDAC complexes were isolated by using protein G (Amersham Pharmacia Biotech) according to the manufacturer's instructions. Briefly, protein G-coupled beads were washed twice with phosphate-buffered saline-0.1% bovine serum albumin and incubated with primary antibody (anti-IE1 or anti-HDAC-2) overnight at 4°C with continuous rolling. After extensive washing with phosphate-buffered saline-0.1% bovine serum albumin, beads were incubated with nuclear extracts overnight at 4°C on a roller. Beads were washed at least three times, and an aliquot was used for Western blotting to determine the concentration of HDAC-2; the remainder was stored at -70°C. Blots were scanned, and the amount of HDAC-2 was determined with ImageQuant Systems software. The results were used to normalize the input in the HDAC deacetylation assay.
HDAC activity assay. HDAC activity was assessed with the HDAC activity assay kit (Upstate Biotech, Lake Placid, N.Y.) according to the manufacturer's instructions. Immune complexes were incubated with 20,000 cpm of [3H]acetyl-labeled histone H4 peptide (Upstate Biotech) in 1x HDAC buffer at room temperature for 24 h with rolling. Reactions were stopped by adding 50 µl of 0.12 N acetic acid-0.72 N HCl. The released acetate was extracted in 0.5 ml of ethyl acetate and mixed in 5 ml of scintillation solution, and radioactivity was measured in a scintillation counter. All assays were performed in duplicate.
Confocal microscopy. Cells were examined with a Leica TCS SPII confocal laser scanning system. Two or three channels were recorded simultaneously and/or sequentially and controlled for possible breakthrough between the fluorescein isothiocyanate and Texas Red signals and between the blue and red channels.
| RESULTS |
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PML has been shown to interact with IE1 of HCMV (1). We asked whether PML was necessary for IE1 of MCMV to be segregated. Both by infection and by transfection of PML-/- cells, we found that IE1 and Daxx colocalized in individual dots (shown in Fig. 1I for transfection). In most uninfected or untransfected PML-/- cells, Daxx was highly enriched in condensed chromatin (17). During IE1 accumulation, Daxx appeared to be enriched together with IE1 in certain aggregates and possibly diffuse in the nucleoplasm, while the condensed chromatin accumulations of Daxx were depleted. Therefore, it remains unclear whether the known interaction of Daxx with PML is essential for the recruitment of IE1 to ND10.
We used Daxx-/- cells to test whether Daxx is necessary for the deposition of IE1 at ND10. At 2 h postinfection, Daxx-/- cells showed colocalization of IE1 and PML (lower right nucleus in Fig. 1J and K), demonstrating that IE1 can be recruited to ND10 in the absence of Daxx. However, any nucleus with high IE1 content showed IE1 dispersed throughout the nucleus as well as the PML dispersal (upper left nucleus in Fig. 1J and K). These images were prevalent at 3 h postinfection and later. Normal mouse cells infected with MCMV or transfected with pp89UC also revealed dispersal of ND10 (data not shown) and thus showed an effect similar to that of IE1 of HCMV on human cells. The dispersal of ND10 by transient expression of IE1 takes many hours, as previously reported for human IE1 (data not shown) (18). Thus, IE1 recruitment to ND10 can be affected by either PML or Daxx, and the dispersion of ND10 by the latter was due to high concentrations of IE1.
We had observed that HDAC-2 needed IE1 to be deposited at ND10 in wild-type MEF. When we tested whether MCMV-infected Daxx-/- MEF had HDAC-2 at ND10 at very early infection times and before ND10 dispersal, we found no enrichment for HDAC-2 at PML aggregates (Fig. 1L and M). Recruitment of HDAC-2 therefore appears to depend on the presence of both IE1 and Daxx.
Dispersion of ND10 in herpes simplex virus type 1 is due to the ubiquitination activity of ICP0, followed by the proteosome-dependent hydrolysis of PML, Daxx, and Sp100 (11). To determine whether the MCMV IE1-dependent dispersion of ND10 might involve a similar process of protein degradation, we monitored the abundance of PML, Daxx, and HDAC-2 at different times of infection by Western blotting as shown in Fig. 2. IE1 synthesis was evident at 3 h postinfection, and the production increased over time. PML was present at low concentrations in uninfected cells, but instead of a reduction, an increase was already apparent after 3 h of infection, and it became even more abundant at 10 h postinfection The same results were observed for Daxx and HDAC-2. Tubulin served as a loading control. The increase in ND10-associated proteins, which usually results in larger ND10 (32), shows that MCMV IE1 disperses ND10 by a mechanism other than degradation of the constituent proteins.
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In Fig. 3A, we show in each row the input protein from uninfected cells (lane 1) and infected cells (lane 2). Lane 3 shows the control for beads with nonimmune serum or beads with no serum from infected cells, whereas lane 4 shows the immunoprecipitate from anti-IE1-charged beads used on the uninfected cell extract and lane 5 shows the experimental sample where anti-IE1-charged beads were used on extracts from infected cells. The anti-IE1-charged beads immunoprecipitated IE1 in all three cell types. When the gels were analyzed for coimmunoprecipitated proteins, we found that IE1 brought down PML, Daxx, and HDAC-2 from MCMV-infected MEF extract. In PML-/- cells, Daxx and HDAC-2 were coimmunoprecipitated, and in Daxx-/- cells, PML and HDAC-2 were immunoprecipitated. These results suggest that PML and HDAC-2 are not dependent on Daxx and that Daxx and HDAC-2 are not dependent on PML for binding to IE1.
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Figure 4 summarizes the results from the coimmunoprecipitation analyses in schematic form. The arrowheads point to the protein used to "capture" the protein from which the arrow originates. The figure indicates that IE1 can bind to PML, Daxx, and HDAC-2 and that neither Daxx nor PML is necessary for the other proteins to interact with IE1, validating the recruitment data derived by in situ staining of cells at very early times after infection.
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Deacetylation activity was substantially reduced in infected cells (Fig. 5, lane 2). Also in IE1-transfected cells (Fig. 5, lane 4), HDAC activity was reduced despite the fact that only about 30% of the cells were transfected and therefore much of the HDAC was not exposed to IE1 in the cell. Potentially soluble IE1 and HDAC interacted after the opening of the cell. A somewhat stronger repression of HDAC-2 activity was observed when anti-IE1 antibodies were used to coimmunoprecipitate HDAC from MCMV-infected cells and thus all of the HDAC used for the activity assay was bound at the time of immunoprecipitation. A strong reduction in HDAC-2 activity was also found when anti-IE1 antibodies were used to coimmunoprecipitate HDAC-2 from IE1-transfected cells (Fig. 5, lane 5). However, the decrease in HDAC activity in infected cells does not appear to be due solely to IE1, because when IE1- MCMV was used for infection, we found a repeatable lowering of HDAC activity (Fig. 5, lane 3). The HDAC activity assay after infection or transfection strongly suggests that binding of HDAC-2 to IE1 decreases the deacetylation activity and that binding is not transitory.
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IE1 was found in ND10 only, in ND10 and diffuse, or completely diffuse (where ND10 is already dispersed) (Fig. 8A). The different images provide a rough measure of the progression of infection, with high concentrations and diffuse IE1 distribution representing the more advanced stage (18). The different images in the same culture at the same time after infection are thought to depend on the number of competent particles infecting individual cells (18). We found that the total number of cells displaying IE1 was the same independent of trichostatin-A treatment (Table 1), indicating that the rate of infection was not influenced by trichostatin-A. However, the number of cells with IE1 diffusely distributed throughout the nucleus was increased after trichostatin-A treatment versus untreated control cells. This suggests either that an increased number of viral genomes actively transcribe in the presence of trichostatin-A or that a constant number of viral genomes have increased transcription.
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If IE1 inhibits HDAC activity, HDAC activity should be higher in the absence of IE1 and more viral genomes should be suppressed. Trichostatin-A exposure of these infected cells should prevent HDAC-dependent suppression. An apparently higher productive infectivity should then be noticed in the presence of trichostatin-A. When IE1-deleted MCMV was used to infect MEF, we found that nearly twice as many cells formed prereplication sites as in the absence of HDAC inhibition with trichostatin-A (Table 1). Most of the additional cells had small prereplication sites. These differences suggest that inhibition of HDAC activity can bring additional cells into the productive replicative cycle and that IE1 is involved in the suppression of HDAC. They also suggest that infected fibroblasts with competent virus genomes exist that apparently do not proceed to the replicative state.
The increase in cells with prereplication domains after exposure to trichostatin-A was about 50% in wild-type MCMV-infected cells, but this does not prove that an increase in productivity can be achieved by the suppression of HDAC. An increase in productively infected cells should be reflected in an increase in competent viral particle formation. We therefore determined the PFU produced in MEF after infection with about 0.1 PFU in the presence and absence of trichostatin-A. Figure 9 shows that there was already an early increase in PFU at 24 h postinfection, which increased over time to a 10-fold-higher number of PFU in trichostatin-A-treated cells.
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| DISCUSSION |
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IE1 of MCMV, like its HCMV counterpart, is first segregated into ND10 and only later disperses these structures when present in larger quantities throughout the nucleus. IE1 expressed after transfection also remains segregated in ND10 for prolonged times or until substantial amounts of IE1 have accumulated in the nucleus. Thus, rather than an enzymatically dependent dispersion, ND10 might undergo a gradual decline as IE1 binds PML and titrates it from ND10, as suggested previously (1). Interestingly, HDAC-2 was recruited into ND10 by IE1 and later released upon the IE1-dependent dispersal of ND10. From this observation, we contemplate the possibility of two competing processes mediated through the same IE1 binding properties.
The first is the segregation of IE1 by the cell into ND10, which, if totally effective, would result in a low productive infection, as seen with competent IE1-deleted viral genomes (15). The second process is overwhelming the cellular defense by the abundant production of IE1, thus titrating the repressive proteins of the cell through IE1-binding induced inactivation. The former may more likely happen in low-particle infection, and the latter with higher particle infection. The higher ratio of cells forming prereplication domains in trichostatin-A-treated IE1-deleted virus infection than in trichostatin-A-treated IE1-producing cells suggests that many competent viruses are repressed by the cell in the absence of IE1 (15). IE1 then should function by counteracting the repressive activities of the cell.
The ability of IE1 to bind to certain repressive host proteins and their functional inactivation through this binding would be the crucial property of IE1 that allows it to advance productive infection. Our coimmunoprecipitation experiments demonstrated the binding of IE1 to PML, Daxx, and HDAC-2. In those analyses, mouse PML-/- and Daxx-/- cells provided crucial controls and the additional information that PML can recruit and bind to IE1 without the adapter function of Daxx. Conversely, Daxx can bind to IE1 in the absence of PML. Thus, these proteins can interact with IE1 independently. It even appears that Daxx can aggregate or precipitate small amounts of IE1 in the absence of PML. Binding of the repressor proteins Daxx and PML directly or indirectly is therefore established for the multifunctional IE1 of MCMV. Unfortunately, there are no direct assays for the functions of PML and Daxx as an independent means to test if IE1 binding changes the functions of the interferon-upregulated PML and Daxx proteins that could change the replicative success of the virus.
Daxx had been reported to bind to HDAC (26), although we could not detect any HDAC at ND10 in uninfected cells. HDAC might bind to the same C-terminal domain on Daxx that is used to bind to PML (17) and therefore not bind to PML at ND10. However, HDAC-2 and presumably HDAC-1, which is often found in the same complex (4), are segregated to ND10 by IE1, and there Daxx appears to exert essential adapter functions, as Daxx-/- cells show no enrichment of HDAC at PML-positive sites. An in vitro assay exists for HDAC, and we could show that HDAC bound to IE1 has substantially decreased activity. This assay as well as the coimmunoprecipitation analysis provided strong evidence that IE1 and HDAC-2 do not interact transiently but remain bound. Assuming that this nontransient binding also occurs in the cell, IE1 might inhibit HDAC activity by making it unavailable to its histone substrate and thus retaining the acetylated state conductive to continued transcription.
Deacetylation has been equated with inducing transcriptional repression (23). We observed an increase in viral IE1 and E1 production as well as a substantial increase in the production of competent viral particles when deacetylation was inhibited by trichostatin-A. This is consistent with the idea that IE1 suppresses HDAC. Since HDAC may not only deacetylate histones (23), the mechanism of HDAC suppression of MCMV remains obscure. However, histone deacetylation as a potential repressive mechanism implies a requirement for chromatinization of infecting viral genomes. The ability of antibodies to precipitate the various immediate-early promoter regions showed that MCMV is present as chromatin during infection of permissive cells. Acetylation-dependent activation of the lytic cycle of Epstein-Barr virus (7) and reactivation of latent HCMV from T2 cells (35) by trichostatin-A have been reported. Here we could show that both acetylated and deacetylated IE1 promoter regions exist in the same culture of permissive cells during lytic infection.
A possible consequence of histone-induced nucleosome formation of MCMV is deacetylation of the respective histones and suppression of transcription from those genomes. If such chromatization and repression occur during normal infection of permissive cells, a block of deacetylation would allow transcription of more viral genomes. Such a shift in balance would only be observed when some infected cells successfully block all viral genomes from proceeding to the early stage of the replication cascade. Our analysis of such a scenario revealed an approximately 50% increase in the number of cells supporting productive infection when deacetylation is blocked. Significantly, an additional 87% of the cells produced prereplication sites under the same conditions when IE1 was absent. This increase was not due to a potential trichostatin-A-induced change in infection rate.
Whether by deacetylation of histones or other proteins, inhibition of HDAC activity appears to drive viral genomes into the productive cycle, genomes that would otherwise remain repressed. The mechanism that represses MCMV in infected permissive fibroblasts may have consequences for the progression to virus latency. In fact, this finding suggests that some fibroblasts may harbor latent virus if the same mechanism works in vivo and the cells are not eliminated by the immune system. This should be a testable possibility.
The mechanism with which IE1 appears to effect suppression of the cellular defense mechanism, here shown directly only for HDAC, is binding and thus blocking HDAC activity on viral genomes. If this is the case, HDAC seems to prevent acetylation or reacetylation of the viral chromatin and the accompanying activation of viral transcription. IE1 binding of other proteins such as PML and Daxx might also be important to prevent inactivation of the viral genome, although we presently have no good concept of how this might be. In this context, it is interesting that IE1 has a histone-binding domain and binds avidly to histones (33), thus making unavailable histones that would tend to form nucleosomes with the replicating viral DNA. IE1 may be using the same mechanism, binding, to prevent nucleosome formation, which is detrimental in packaging in the late stage of the replicative cycle. Inactivation of cellular repressors by binding may play an important role in the apparent transactivating properties of some viral proteins.
| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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This study was supported by funds from NIH AI 41136 and from the Human Frontier Science Program and the G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Charitable Foundation. NIH core grant CA-10815 is acknowledged for support of the microscopy and sequencing facility.
| FOOTNOTES |
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