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Journal of Virology, February 2009, p. 1845-1855, Vol. 83, No. 4
0022-538X/09/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/JVI.01061-08
Copyright © 2009, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Protective HLA Class I Alleles That Restrict Acute-Phase CD8+ T-Cell Responses Are Associated with Viral Escape Mutations Located in Highly Conserved Regions of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1
,
Yaoyu E. Wang,1,
Bin Li,1,
Jonathan M. Carlson,2
Hendrik Streeck,1
Adrianne D. Gladden,1
Robert Goodman,1
Arne Schneidewind,1
Karen A. Power,1
Ildiko Toth,1
Nicole Frahm,1
Galit Alter,1
Christian Brander,1,¶
Mary Carrington,3
Bruce D. Walker,1,4
Marcus Altfeld,1
David Heckerman,2 and
Todd M. Allen1*
Partners AIDS Research Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, Massachusetts,1
Microsoft Research, Redmond, Washington,2
Laboratory of Genomic Diversity, SAIC-Frederick, Inc., National Cancer Institute, Frederick, Maryland,3
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Chevy Chase, Maryland4
Received 20 May 2008/
Accepted 11 November 2008

ABSTRACT
The control of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) associated
with particular HLA class I alleles suggests that some CD8
+ T-cell responses may be more effective than others at containing
HIV-1. Unfortunately, substantial diversities in the breadth,
magnitude, and function of these responses have impaired our
ability to identify responses most critical to this control.
It has been proposed that CD8 responses targeting conserved
regions of the virus may be particularly effective, since the
development of cytotoxic T-lymphocyte (CTL) escape mutations
in these regions may significantly impair viral replication.
To address this hypothesis at the population level, we derived
near-full-length viral genomes from 98 chronically infected
individuals and identified a total of 76 HLA class I-associated
mutations across the genome, reflective of CD8 responses capable
of selecting for sequence evolution. The majority of HLA-associated
mutations were found in p24 Gag, Pol, and Nef. Reversion of
HLA-associated mutations in the absence of the selecting HLA
allele was also commonly observed, suggesting an impact of most
CTL escape mutations on viral replication. Although no correlations
were observed between the number or location of HLA-associated
mutations and protective HLA alleles, limiting the analysis
to mutations selected by acute-phase immunodominant responses
revealed a strong positive correlation between mutations at
conserved residues and protective HLA alleles. These data suggest
that control of HIV-1 may be associated with acute-phase CD8
responses capable of selecting for viral escape mutations in
highly conserved regions of the virus, supporting the inclusion
of these regions in the design of an effective vaccine.

INTRODUCTION
Despite substantial advances in antiretroviral therapies, development
of an effective human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1)
vaccine remains a critical goal (
6,
39,
82). Unfortunately,
current vaccine efforts have failed to reduce infection rates
in humans (
9,
75) and have only achieved modest decreases in
viral loads in the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV)/SHIV
macaque model (
21,
44,
81). A majority of these vaccine approaches
have focused on inducing T-cell responses, utilizing large regions
of the virus in an attempt to induce a broad array of immune
responses (
6,
34,
44,
81). While it is well established that
CD8
+ T-cell responses play a critical role in the containment
of HIV-1 (
45,
49,
67), supported in part by the strong association
of particular HLA class I alleles with control of HIV (
20,
33,
42,
61), it remains unclear which particular CD8
+ T-cell responses
are best able to control the virus and thus should be preferentially
targeted by a vaccine. Studies comparing the magnitude, breadth,
and function of CD8
+ T-cell responses in subjects exhibiting
either enhanced or poor control of HIV-1 have yielded few clues
as to the specific factors associated with an effective CD8
+ T-cell response (
2,
28,
64,
67). Various differences in the
functional capacity of T-cell responses have been observed in
long-term nonprogressors (
1,
26,
64), although it is possible
that these differences may be reflective of an intact immune
response, as opposed to having had directly enhanced immune
control. As such, efforts are needed to identify factors or
phenotypes associated with protective CD8
+ T-cell responses
in order to enable vaccines to induce the most effective responses.
Recent studies have begun to suggest that the specificity of the CD8+ T-cell response, or the targeting of specific regions of the virus, may be associated with control of HIV-1. Preferential targeting of Gag, a structurally conserved viral protein responsible for multiple functions, has been associated with lower viral loads (25, 43, 56, 60, 77, 85). Furthermore, Kiepiela et al. (43) recently illustrated in a large cohort of 578 clade C-infected subjects that Gag-specific responses were associated with lowered viremia, in contrast to Env-specific responses, which were associated with higher viremia. These data are in line with previous observations that many of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I alleles most strongly associated with control of HIV-1 and SIV, namely, HLA-B57, HLA-B27, and Mamu-A*01, restrict immunodominant CD8+ T-cell responses against the Gag protein (8, 10, 24, 63, 68, 83). However, other alleles associated with slower disease progression, such as HLA-B51 in humans and Mamu-B08 and B-17 in the rhesus macaque, do not immunodominantly target Gag, suggesting that targeting of some other regions of the virus may also be capable of eliciting control (8, 52-54). In addition, recent studies investigating the pattern of HIV-1-specific CD8+ T-cell responses during acute infection reveal that only a small subset of CD8+ T-cell responses restricted by any given HLA allele arise during acute infection and that there exist clear immunodominance patterns to these responses (8, 77, 85). Since control of HIV-1 is likely to be established or lost during the first few weeks of infection, these data suggest that potentially only a few key CD8+ T-cell responses may be needed to adequately establish early control of HIV-1.
One of the major factors limiting the effectiveness of CD8+ T-cell responses is the propensity for HIV-1 to evade these responses through sequence evolution or viral escape (3, 13, 66). Even single point mutations within a targeted CD8 epitope can effectively abrogate recognition by either the HLA allele or the T-cell receptor. However, recent studies have begun to highlight that many sequence polymorphisms will revert to more common consensus residues upon transmission of HIV-1 to a new host, including many cytotoxic T-lymphocyte (CTL) escape mutations (4, 30, 33, 48, 50). Notably, the more rapidly reverting mutations have been observed to preferentially occur at conserved residues, indicating that structurally conserved regions of the virus may be particularly refractory to sequence changes (50). In support of these data, many CTL escape mutations have now been observed to directly impair viral replication (15, 23, 55, 74), in particular those known to either revert or require the presence of secondary compensatory mutations (15, 23, 73, 74). Taken together, these data suggest that, whereas CTL escape mutations provide a benefit to the virus to enable the evasion of host immune pressures, some of these mutations may come at a substantial cost to viral replication. These data may also imply that the association between Gag-specific responses and control of HIV-1 may be due to the targeting of highly conserved regions of the virus that are difficult to evade through sequence evolution.
The propensity by which HIV-1 escapes CD8+ T-cell responses, and the reproducibility by which mutations arise at precise residues in targeted CD8 epitopes (3, 48), also enables the utilization of sequence data to predict which responses may be most capable of exerting immune selection pressure on the virus. Studies in HIV-1, SIV, and hepatitis C virus (16, 58, 65, 78) are now rapidly identifying immune-driven CTL escape mutations across these highly variable pathogens at the population level by correlating sequence polymorphisms in these viruses with the expression of particular HLA alleles. We provide here an analysis of HLA-associated mutations across the entire HIV-1 genome using a set of sequences derived from clade B chronically infected individuals. Through full-length viral genome coverage, these data provide an unbiased analysis of the location of these mutations and suggest that the control of HIV-1 by particular HLA alleles correlates with their ability to preferentially restrict early CD8+ T-cell responses capable of selecting for viral escape mutations at highly conserved residues of the virus. These data provide support for the inclusion of specific highly conserved regions of HIV-1 into vaccine antigens.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Subjects.
Ninety-eight chronic untreated HIV-1 subtype B-infected subjects
were enrolled in Boston through the Massachusetts General Hospital,
the Lemuel-Shattuck Hospital, and the Fenway Community Health
Center. The study was approved by the Massachusetts General
Hospital Review Board, and all subjects gave written informed
consent.
HLA typing.
Molecular HLA typing was performed by the Tissue Typing Laboratory at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford, the Massachusetts General Hospital Tissue Typing Laboratory, and the Centre for Clinical Immunology and Biomedical Statistics at the Royal Perth Hospital and Murdock University in Perth, Australia.
Viral sequencing.
Genomic DNA was extracted from peripheral blood mononuclear cell samples (5 million cells) by using a QIAamp DNA blood minikit (Qiagen catalog no. 51104). Nested PCR protocols with limiting dilution adapted from Salminen et al. (71, 72) were used to amplify HIV-1 genomes lacking 5' and 3' long terminal repeat regions using EXL DNA polymerase (Stratagene catalog no. 600344). The sequences of the primary forward and reverse PCR primers, respectively, were 5'-AAATCTCTAGCAGTGGCGCCCGAACAG-3' and 5'-TGAGGGATCTCTAGTTACCAGAGTC-3', while the nested forward and reverse primers were 5'-GCGGAGGCTAGAAGGAGAGAGATGG-3' and 5'-GCACTCAAGGCAAGCTTTATTGAGGCTTA-3'. The PCR cycling conditions were as follows: 92°C for 2 min; 10 cycles of 10 s at 92°C, 30 s at 60°C, and 10 min at 68°C; 20 cycles of 10 s at 92°C, 30 s at 55°C, and 10 min at 68°C; and a final extension of 10 min at 68°C. Five independent PCR products of each sample were pooled and purified by using a QIAquick PCR purification kit (Qiagen catalog no. 28104) and directly population sequenced at the Massachusetts General Hospital DNA Sequencing Core facility using 70 clade B consensus sequencing primers as previously described (7).
Phylogenetic analysis of HLA-associated sequence polymorphisms.
To identify associations between HLA alleles and HIV polymorphisms, we used a previously described phylogenetic correction method (12, 19), with a slight modification to account for HLA linkage disequilibrium. Briefly, a maximum-likelihood tree was generated for each gene. To compute the pairwise correlation between an HLA allele and an observed amino acid, two models of evolution were compared by using a likelihood ratio test. In the null model, the amino acid was allowed to evolve independently down the tree ("independent evolution model"). In the alternative model, the presence (or absence) of the HLA allele in a given patient was allowed to influence the final transition at the leaf node ("conditional evolution model"). To account for HLA linkage disequilibrium, we used a decision tree built using forward selection. First, for every amino acid at each codon, the allele with the strongest association was added to the list of identified associations. Then, individuals expressing this allele were removed from the data set, and the analysis was repeated. This forward-selection procedure was iterated until no HLA allele yielded an association with an uncorrected P value of <0.05, thus tending to eliminate spurious associations due to HLA linkage disequilibrium. Rare HLA-amino acid pairs were not considered; specifically, we required that the observed or expected count in each bin of the two-by-two contingency table was at least three. To account for multiple comparisons, P values were converted to q-values (76) by using a permutation test as previously described (19). Associations with q
0.2, corresponding to a 20% false discovery rate (11), are reported. In the present study, correlations in the presence of an HLA allele are called "escape associations," and correlations in the absence of an HLA allele are called "reversion associations".
HLA RH and immunodominance.
The relative hazards (RHs) for disease progression for each HLA allele were previously determined (21, 33, 62; data not shown). Here we used the RH values for progression to AIDS disease definition of 1987 as a marker of "protective" versus "hazardous" HLA alleles. Based on a previous study by Altfeld et al. (8), acute-phase immunodominant responses were defined as any HIV-1-specific CD8+ T-cell response that was detected in at least one HIV-1-infected subject within the first 2 months following presentation with acute HIV-1 infection. We then ranked the epitopes restricted by each HLA allele in the order of their frequency of recognition, such that the epitope most frequently recognized by individuals expressing the corresponding allele received a ranking of 1, and the second most frequently recognized epitope received a ranking of 2, and so on.
Conservation and covariation analysis.
Conservation scores for each residue were calculated by using PFAAT (17) for clade B sequence alignments derived from the LANL HIV Sequence Database (http://www.hiv.lanl.gov), which removed highly similar sequences such as multiple clones from a single isolate and multiple sequences from a single patient. The conservation score S is defined as S = 1 – H, where H represents the normalized Shannon entropy of a particular column in the alignment. We applied a previously derived P value and algorithm (79) for pairwise residue covariation analysis on all clade B sequences, limited to one sequence per patient, for all HIV coding genes. P values are adjusted by Bonferroni correction. Sequences were aligned to HXB2, and positions where either the residue conservation score was <0.6 or a gap represented the most abundant variant were removed from the analysis. VisANT was used for network visualization (37, 38).
Statistical analysis.
Mann-Whitney, Spearman correlated coefficient tests, and Fisher exact tests were conducted using Prism 4.0 (GraphPad, San Diego, CA). Cook's distances (D) (22) were calculated using MatLab 7.0 (MathWorks, Natick, MA). The data points are consider outliers (35) if D
4/n, where n is number of data points.
Predicted CD8 epitopes.
Predicted CD8 epitopes were determined based on scanning the cohort consensus sequence using the epitope prediction algorithm developed by Heckerman et al. (36).
Nucleotide sequence accession numbers.
All sequence data in the present study were deposited in GenBank under accession numbers FJ469682 to FJ469772 and DQ886031 to DQ886038 (27).

RESULTS
Identification of HLA-associated sequence polymorphisms across the HIV-1 genome.
Viral escape from CD8
+ T-cell responses frequently occurs through
evolution of specific residues within or flanking a given CD8
epitope (
3,
48). This phenomenon, typically driven by the selection
of mutations at the most variable residue, enables CD8 escape
mutations, or HLA-associated mutations, to be rapidly identified
at the population level (
16,
58,
65,
78). In order to identify
frequent HLA-associated mutations across the HIV-1 genome, we
sequenced the entire coding region (from Gag to Nef; nucleotides
790 to 9414 on HXB2) of viruses derived from 98 chronic untreated
HIV-1 subtype B-infected subjects with an average sequence length
of 8,794 nucleotide bases. A total of 18 HLA-A, 26 HLA-B, and
14 HLA-C alleles were represented in this cohort (see Table
S1 in the supplemental material). HLA-associated sequence polymorphisms
across the viral genome were then identified by using a phylogenetics-based
likelihood-ratio approach (PhyloD) (
12,
19). The PhyloD approach
corrects for confounding founder effects by considering phylogeny
as a source of hierarchical structure in a generative model,
which can provide much higher specificity to the assessment
of HLA-associated polymorphisms. The PhyloD approach captures
positive selection and purifying negative selection processes
within four states: polymorphisms away from a particular residue
("escape") or toward a specific nonconsensus residue ("attraction")
in the presence of a specific HLA allele and polymorphisms away
from nonconsensus residues ("repulsion") or toward a particular
residue ("reversion") in the absence of a specific HLA. For
the current analyses, these four states were consolidated into
either "escaping" (escape or attraction in the presence of HLA)
or "reverting" (reversion or repulsion in the absence of HLA).
The PhyloD approach identified a total of 76 HLA-associated polymorphisms located at 47 distinct amino acid residues across HIV-1 (see Table S2 in the supplemental material). These were further broken down into 41 escaping and 35 reverting associations, with 29 positions overlapping between them. These HLA-associated mutations were then categorized into four classes based on their location relative to epitopes: (i) located within previously defined CD8 epitopes (46), (ii) flanking described CD8 epitopes (within 3 amino acid residues), or within (iii) or flanking (iv) predicted CD8 epitopes. Using these criteria there were 17, 1, 18, and 5 escaping associations found in each class, respectively, and 13, 1, 15, and 6 reverting associations for each class (Table 1). As expected, we observed HLA-associated escape mutations in common CD8 epitopes such as B57-TW10, B27-KK10, and A3-RK9, where CTL escape has previously been described in longitudinal analyses (see Fig. S1 in the supplemental material) (3, 4, 41, 48). Moreover, we also identified HLA-associated reversions in the B57-TW10 and A3-RK9 epitopes as previously described (48), verifying the use of the PhyloD approach for identifying both of these types of associations at the population level. Notably, the numbers of HLA-associated polymorphism detected are significantly different from the frequencies of specific HLA alleles (P < 0.0001 [Mann-Whitney test]), illustrating lack of any bias introduced by high frequency alleles in this analysis. Therefore, due to the modest size of this cohort (n = 98), these HLA associations likely represent some of the strongest associations, reflective of those CD8+ T-cell responses capable of exerting the greatest selective pressure.
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TABLE 1. Distribution of HLA-associated escape and reversing mutations observed across the HIV-1 genome relative to the location of the CD8+ T-cell restricted epitope
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HLA-associated polymorphisms are concentrated in Gag, Pol, and Nef.
We first examined whether HLA-associated mutations might be
clustering in specific regions of HIV-1, comparing the frequency
and location of escaping and reverting HLA-associated polymorphisms
across the HIV-1 genome. As illustrated in Fig.
1, the majority
of HLA-associated sequence changes were located in Gag (
n =
19), Pol (
n = 31), and Nef (
n = 16), where previous studies
have illustrated that HIV-specific CD8
+ T-cell responses are
most frequently detected (
2,
28). In contrast, very few HLA-associations
were detectable in Env (
n = 3) and the accessory and regulatory
proteins. Furthermore, 32 of 76 of the polymorphisms, both escaping
and reverting mutations, were located within or flanking described
epitopes in Gag and Nef (Table
1). Therefore, the HLA-associated
mutations reflective of immune-driven viral evolution support
the dominant targeting of the viral proteins Gag and Nef by
CD8
+ T-cell responses. In contrast, the majority (24 of 31 [77%])
of the associated polymorphisms occurring in Pol were located
within or flanking predicted epitopes that have not been previously
described. In comparing these predicted epitopes with CD8
+ T-cell
responses detected using genome-wide overlapping peptides in
cells from clade B chronically infected subjects (
28), we found
that for 10 of 27 (37%) overlapping peptides containing predicted
epitopes, at least 10% of the individuals expressing the specific
HLA allele exhibited a response, suggesting that a substantial
number of CD8 epitopes in this protein have not yet been mapped.
HLA-associated mutations arise at both conserved and variable residues across HIV-1.
In Fig.
1, the relative proportions of escaping (
n = 41) and
reverting (
n = 35) sequence polymorphisms were similar within
any given protein, suggesting an overall balance between positive
(escaping) and purifying (reverting) evolutionary selective
pressures. To more closely examine the relationship between
escaping and reverting HLA-associated mutations, the location
of these associations across the viral genome was plotted against
the conservation score (1-entropy) of the residue at which they
arose. Figure
2 illustrates that HLA-associated mutations were
equally present at both highly conserved and more variable residues.
Moreover, in the majority of residues where forward escape mutations
were identified a matching HLA-associated reversion was also
detected (30 of 41 cases [71%]). Our previous study examining
viral evolution in longitudinally monitored subjects illustrated
that reverting mutations preferentially arose within structurally
conserved residues, with mutations in Gag and Pol proteins reverting
much more rapidly than in other proteins (
50). Again, we observed
that escaping residues without an associated reversion were
significantly less conserved than escaping residues with an
associated reversion (Fig.
2; mean conservation score of 0.825
versus 0.741, respectively [
P = 0.018]). Taken together, these
data support that many CTL escape mutations are reverting upon
transmission to a new host and that the inherent conservation
of a given residue can strongly influence the propensity for
reversion to occur, likely reflecting different impacts of mutations
on viral fitness.
HLA-associated polymorphisms are predominantly driven by immunodominant CD8+ T-cell responses.
Recent studies have begun to examine the immunodominance patterns
of CD8
+ T-cell responses, illustrating that only a small subset
of defined CD8
+ T-cell responses are actually present during
acute infection and therefore may have a disproportional effect
on early control of HIV-1 (
8,
77). Since this subset of CD8
+ T-cell responses represents the first line of responses that
HIV-1 encounters, we examined whether HLA-associated mutations
reflective of viral escape were preferentially occurring within
epitopes targeted by the most frequent acute-phase responses.
We counted the number of the respective HLA-associated mutations
in defined CD8 epitopes targeted during the early phase of infection.
These epitopes were plotted in ranked order as described in
Materials and Methods. Of the 15 described CD8 epitopes recognized
during acute-phase infection that contain HLA-associated escape
mutations, close to half of these (7 of 15 [47%]) were targeted
by the most frequently mounted CD8
+ T-cell response of any given
HLA allele (Fig.
3). These data suggest that the most immunodominant
acute-phase CD8
+ T-cell responses are preferentially driving
viral escape or that, conversely, HIV-1 is actively evading
responses that dominate the acute phase of infection. These
data are in line with previous reports indicating preferential
viral escape from the earliest CD8
+ T-cell responses in HIV-1
and SIV infection (
40,
62).
Protective HLA alleles restrict acute-phase CD8+ T-cell responses that are associated with viral escape mutations at highly conserved residues.
Numerous studies now illustrate that targeting of the Gag protein
by HIV-specific CD8
+ T-cell responses, as measured by a gamma
interferon enzyme-linked immunospot assay, correlates with the
control of HIV-1 (
25,
56,
60,
77,
85). These data are supported
by recent studies illustrating that certain CTL escape mutations
in Gag impair viral replication (
15,
23,
55,
74), suggesting
that HIV-1 may be constrained in its ability to effectively
escape from cellular immune pressures against this highly conserved
region of the virus. To determine whether immune control of
HIV-1 may more broadly correlate with the ability of CD8
+ T-cell
responses to exhibit immune selection pressure at conserved
residues, we examined the correlation between residue conservation
at immune-driven escaping positions with the RH (
80) of each
restricting HLA allele for disease progression (
20,
32,
61).
No correlation was observed when the residue conservation of
all 41 immune-driven escape mutations was compared to the RH
of the mutations' restricting HLA allele (Fig.
4a,
R = –0.1482,
P = 0.3553 [Spearman rank]). This analysis was the same regardless
of whether all associations, or only those associated with defined
CD8 epitopes, were included in the analysis. However, given
the potential for acute-phase CD8
+ T-cell responses to disproportionately
influence early outcome of HIV-1 infection, the analysis was
then limited only to those HLA-associated mutations localized
within epitopes targeted by acute-phase CD8
+ T-cell responses
(
8,
77) (see Table S2 in the supplemental material) to test
the hypothesis of whether escape mutations selected by CD8 responses
restricted by protective alleles are more conserved than those
selected by hazardous HLA alleles. Here, we observed a significant
inverse correlation between the RH of the restricting HLA allele
and the conservation of the CD8
+ T-cell selected escaping residues
(
R = –0.5650,
P = 0.0282 [Spearman rank test]). In this
analysis, there were two clear potential outliers (T290 in the
B51-TI8 epitope in Pol and Y81 in the B35-VY8 epitope in Nef)
based on Cook's distance (
22) as described in Materials and
Methods. When these outliers were removed from the analysis,
this inverse correlation remained significant and was further
strengthened (
R = –0.7746,
P = 0.0019 [Spearman rank test])
(data not shown). Therefore, while Altfeld et al. (
8) have previously
shown that epitope sequence heterogenicity does not influence
immunodominance patterns, suggesting that conserved epitopes
are not preferentially targeted during the acute phase, we examined
here residue conservation at the exact residue where the HLA-associated
escape mutation occurs as a measurement of the potential for
an escape mutation to impact viral replication. Taken together,
these data suggest that protective HLA alleles are associated
with acute-phase CD8
+ T-cell responses that select for viral
escape mutations at more conserved residues, whereas the early
responses restricted by hazardous HLA alleles select for mutations
at more variable residues. These results provide broader support
for the observation that targeting of the highly conserved p24
region of Gag by CD8
+ T-cell responses correlates with control
of HIV-1 (
29,
43) and moreover suggest that the capacity of
early responses to select for viral escape mutations may represent
an important component of this phenomenon.
Residue conservation and compensatory mutations influence the reversion of HLA-associated mutations.
We have previously observed that during acute HIV-1 infection
transmitted mutations revert more quickly when arising in highly
conserved residues (
50). In this regard, it is notable that
of the 11 HLA-associated escape mutations in Fig.
2 that did
not exhibit a matching HLA-associated reversion, 5 were located
at variable residues with entropy values of <0.75. It is
possible that these mutations may have had only a minimal impact
on viral replication and, therefore, were less apt to revert
upon transmission. It is also possible that compensatory mutations
could have arisen during viral escape which functioned to temper
the impact of these escape mutations on viral replication (
15,
23,
31,
74). To examine whether compensatory mutations might
be influencing the nonreverting HLA-associated mutations, we
performed a covariation analysis between all pairs of residues
within each individual HIV-1 protein to identify pairs of mutations
having a high probability of occurring in conjunction with one
another. This analysis was conducted on a large data set of
284 Gag, 118 Pol, and 600 Nef sequences derived from the Los
Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) HIV database (
www.hiv.lanl.gov).
As validation of this approach, we detected previously described
compensatory mutations for the T242N escape mutation in the
B57-TW10 epitope and the R264K escape mutation in the B27-KK10
epitope (Fig.
5) (
15,
74). The analysis identified three of
the four known covarying residues for B57-TW10 (H219Q, M228I,
and G248A), where H219Q and M228I mutations were previously
shown to partially restore the viral replication defect of T242N
(Fig.
5A). It also successfully identified both the prerequisite
(L268M) and the compensatory (S173A) mutations for the R264K
escape mutation in B27-KK10 (Fig.
5B). In applying this covariation
analysis to the 98 HIV-1 sequences in our data set, we observed
that six of nine sequences exhibiting the T242N mutation contained
one or more of the predicted compensatory residues, in one case
from an HLA-B57-negative subject, suggesting the stability of
some of these mutations upon transmission. Of the nine sequences
containing the R264K mutation, seven contained one or more of
the predicted covarying residues.
In extending this analysis to the 11 HLA-associated escape mutations
in Fig.
2 for which no reversions were detected, we observed
strong covarying residues for the three intraepitope associations
at residues Gag E312, Gag G354, and Nef H116 (Fig.
5C to E)
(Table
2). Notably, these three HLA-associated mutations were
also among the six most conserved residues without detectable
reversions, a finding suggestive of a possible contribution
of compensatory mutations to the lack of reversions detected
at these more conserved residues. Taken together, these data
suggest an important contribution of both the conservation of
escaping residues and covarying mutations, which potentially
compensate for the impact of specific mutations on viral fitness
and their propensity to revert upon transmission.

DISCUSSION
Large population-based studies of HLA-associated polymorphisms
serve to rapidly identify the location and frequency of CTL
escape mutations which function to evade host CD8
+ T-cell responses.
Although previous population studies of HLA class I-associated
mutations in HIV-1 have demonstrated immune selection pressures
against specific HIV-1 residues (
16,
29,
58,
65,
69), we present
here an unbiased assessment of HLA-mediated sequence polymorphisms
across the full subtype B HIV genome. Our data reveal that these
polymorphisms are most frequently observed in Gag, Pol, and
Nef, which are known to be dominantly targeted by CD8
+ T-cell
responses (
2,
28). Escape mutations were also observed to occur
at both highly conserved and variable residues, with matching
reverting HLA-associated mutations also detectable for most
mutations. Notably, escape mutations associated with acute-phase
CD8
+ T-cell responses restricted by protective HLA alleles were
preferentially located at more conserved residues than those
restricted by hazardous HLA alleles. Taken together, these data
suggest that acute-phase CD8
+ T-cell responses capable of selecting
for viral escape mutations within highly conserved regions of
the virus may be critical to the control of HIV-1. These data
lend support to recent suggestions that eliciting CTL responses
targeting highly conserved regions of HIV-1 such as Gag may
be critical to an effective HIV-1 vaccine.
Longitudinal studies of CTL escape have observed that CD8+ T-cell responses represent a major driving force of sequence evolution in HIV, SIV, and hepatitis C virus (3, 16, 47, 58, 62). Viral escape from CD8+ T-cell responses has especially been described during the acute phases of both HIV-1 and SIV infection, illustrating rapid evasion of specific host immune responses during the first few weeks or months after infection (3, 5, 13, 62, 66). Recent studies examining the immunodominance of CD8+ T-cell responses in HIV-1 infection are beginning to reveal predictable patterns to these responses, with some CD8 epitopes preferentially recognized during the acute phase of infection (8, 77). Moreover, responses restricted by some HLA alleles appear to dominate over responses restricted by other HLA alleles (8). Such studies have important implications for vaccine design since control of HIV-1 is predominantly established during the first few weeks or months after infection, with steady-state viral set points strongly predictive of disease progression (57). Therefore, some CD8+ T-cell responses are undoubtedly more critical to this early control than others. In the present study, not only were HLA-associated escape mutations preferentially located within the viral proteins most frequently targeted by CD8+ T-cell responses (Gag, Pol, and Nef) but they were also located within the most immunodominant CD8 epitopes targeted during acute infection. These data strongly support that HIV-1 is preferentially evading the strongest and earliest CD8+ T-cell responses that represent the front line responses.
It has been observed that CTL escape mutations will revert to consensus residues when transmitted to a new host expressing different HLA alleles, since these mutations are no longer required to evade specific CD8+ T-cell responses (4, 30, 33, 48, 50). During the acute phase of infection, such reversions may account for upward of 60% of mutations and notably arise most rapidly when located at more conserved residues (50). These data, and more recent studies directly illustrating the impact of CTL escape mutations on viral replication, provide strong support that a majority of adaptive mutations are capable of impairing the replicative capacity of HIV-1 (15, 23, 50, 73, 74). Our observation that the majority of detected escape mutations are accompanied by a corresponding reversion provides further support for these data at a genome-wide level. Interestingly, however, we observed that a subset of CTL escape mutations were not associated with detectable reversions, with several of the more conserved residues associated with compensatory mutations that may have tempered the effects of the escape mutation on viral replication capacity. These data support the important role that compensatory mutations play in the impact of CTL escape mutations on viral fitness (15, 23, 73) and highlight that due to structural constraints some CTL escape mutations may not be able to acquire the necessary compensatory mutations and thereby may disproportionately impact viral replication capacity. It will be important, therefore, to more broadly examine the frequency and complexity by which compensatory mutations can arise, since as in the case of the B57-TW10 epitope the network of compensatory mutations may be highly complex (15, 74).
The ability to more rapidly generate HIV-1 sequence data and correlate sequence changes with the expression of specific host HLA alleles has enabled a growing number of studies identifying HLA-associated mutations in HIV-1 (14, 16, 51, 58, 65). These studies have begun to provide substantial insight not only into the frequency and complexity of immune-driven mutations but also into the mechanisms associated with "protective" HLA alleles. Frater et al. (29) recently illustrated that HLA alleles associated with slower disease progression were most often associated with CD8+ T-cell responses that drive viral escape in Gag, Pol, and Nef, supporting that "protective" HLA alleles may restrict uniquely strong CD8+ T-cell responses. Our study builds upon this work by extending these analyses to the entire HIV-1 genome, revealing the importance of distinguishing between acute-phase immunodominant responses and chronic responses, and specifically addressing the issue of viral sequence constraints by taking into account the entropy of escaping residues. Through these combined analyses we were able to illustrate that early immunodominant CD8 responses restricted by "protective" HLA alleles primarily select for viral escape mutations in highly conserved regions of HIV-1, suggesting that the protection conferred by specific HLA alleles on HIV-1 disease control may depend upon the costs to replicative capacities required to successfully escape from early immunodominant responses. HIV-1 mutants with diminished replication fitness have been known to provide clinical benefit in practice. For example, many clinicians have chosen to continue to use 3TC even after the 3TC resistance mutation M184V has emerged to take advantage of the viral replicative defect caused by this mutation (18).
Many of the protective MHC class I alleles, such as HLA-B27, HLA-B57, and Mamu-A*01, preferentially restrict CD8+ T-cell responses targeting the highly conserved Gag protein (15, 59, 74, 77). The importance of targeting CD8 epitopes in Gag not only may be due to the sequence conservation of Gag but also may be due to the early presentation of CD8 epitopes in Gag derived from the incoming capsid particle prior to de novo protein synthesis of other viral proteins (70). It is noteworthy, however, that other MHC class I alleles such as HLA-B51, Mamu-B08, and Mamu-B17 associated with the control of HIV-1 and SIV do not immunodominantly target CD8 epitopes in Gag but rather target other viral proteins such as Pol, Vif, and Nef (8, 52-54). Indeed, many of the immunodominant CD8 responses restricted by "protective" HLA alleles were found to drive viral escape in non-Gag proteins, although notably still at highly conserved residues. Therefore, in the development of an HIV-1 vaccine it may be important to consider other highly conserved regions of HIV-1 outside of Gag in order to provide ample targets for the diversity of HLA alleles in the population.
The moderate size of the current data set limited the present study to HLA-associated mutations restricted by common HLA alleles, as well as those HLA alleles for which immunodominance patterns are known, since the original study by Altfeld et al. (8) was not an exhaustive analysis for all known HLA alleles. Similarly, it is likely that we did not have the power to detect CTL escape mutations associated with subdominant CD8+ T-cell responses. In addition, since our study does not focus on end-stage individuals, late-arising CTL escape mutations will not be represented in our study, as well as early escape mutations targeted by acute-phase CD8+ responses. Therefore, while the correlation between the most immunodominant CD8+ responses and likelihood for viral escape was very strong in our study, this correlation might diminish as subjects are monitored later into infection. Further broadening of the data set to a larger cohort will be required to extend our analyses to examine the relative contribution of these additional responses to early immune control of HIV-1. More importantly, the approach of utilizing viral sequence polymorphisms as a measurement of the impact of particular CD8+ T responses on HIV-1 fitness obviously does not take into account CD8 epitopes that do not escape. Here, larger datasets will enable determining whether in fact some epitopes are completely refractory to escape or escape only late in infection. Finally, it will be important to extend these analyses to other clades of HIV-1 to determine whether similar correlates of immune control exist in the setting of different viral strains and different frequencies of HLA alleles.
In conclusion, these data provide an initial assessment of HLA-associated sequence polymorphisms across the entire HIV-1 proteome and suggest an important influence of early immunodominant CD8+ T-cell responses not only on viral evolution but also potentially on the outcome of HIV-1 infection. More importantly, we show that the HLA alleles that correlate with disease control are capable of selecting for viral sequence polymorphisms in highly conserved regions of HIV-1. Taken together, these findings suggest that vaccines designed to elicit CD8+ T-cell responses may need to focus responses against highly conserved regions of the virus that would exact a substantial impact on viral fitness.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This study was supported by the National Institutes of Health
grant R01-AI054178 (T.M.A.) and as part of the Collaboration
for AIDS Vaccine Discovery with support from the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation.

FOOTNOTES
* Corresponding author. Mailing address: MGH-East, CNY 6625, 149 13th Street, Charlestown, MA 02129. Phone: (617) 726-7846. Fax: (617) 724-8586. E-mail:
tallen2{at}partners.org 
Published ahead of print on 26 November 2008. 
Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://jvi.asm.org/. 
Y.E.W. and B.L. contributed equally to this study. 
¶ Present address: Laboratori de Retrovirologia, Fundació irsiCaixa, Hospital Universitari Germans Trias i Pujol, Ctra del Canyet s/n, 08916 Badalona, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. 

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Journal of Virology, February 2009, p. 1845-1855, Vol. 83, No. 4
0022-538X/09/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/JVI.01061-08
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