No abstract

The necessity for pathogen recognition of viral infection by the innate immune system in initiating early innate and adaptive host defenses is well documented. However, little is known about the role these receptors play in the maintenance of adaptive immune responses and their contribution to resolution of persistent viral infections. In this study, we demonstrate a nonredundant functional requirement for both nucleic acid-sensing TLRs and RIG-I–like receptors in the control of a mouse model of chronic viral infection. Whereas the RIG-I–like receptor pathway was important for production of type I IFNs and optimal CD8+ T cell responses, nucleic acid-sensing TLRs were largely dispensable. In contrast, optimal anti-viral Ab responses required intact signaling through nucleic acid-sensing TLRs, and the absence of this pathway correlated with less virus-specific Ab and deficient long-term virus control of a chronic infection. Surprisingly, absence of the TLR pathway had only modest effects on Ab production in an acute infection with a closely related virus strain, suggesting that persistent TLR stimulation may be necessary for optimal Ab responses in a chronic infection. These results indicate that innate virus recognition pathways may play critical roles in the outcome of chronic viral infections through distinct mechanisms.

The external domains of the HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein (gp120 and the gp41 ectodomain, collectively known as gp140) contain all known viral neutralization epitopes. Various strategies have been used to create soluble trimers of the envelope to mimic the structure of the native viral protein, including mutation of the gp120-gp41 cleavage site, introduction of disulfide bonds, and fusion to heterologous trimerization motifs. We compared the effects on quaternary structure, antigenicity, and immunogenicity of three such motifs: T4 fibritin, a GCN4 variant, and the E. coli aspartate transcarbamoylase catalytic subunit. Fusion of each motif to the C-terminus of a non-cleavable JRCSF gp140(-) envelope protein led to enhanced trimerization but had limited effects on the antigenic profile and CD4 binding ability of the trimers. Immunization of rabbits provided no evidence that the trimerized gp140(-) constructs induced significantly improved neutralizing antibodies to several HIV-1 pseudoviruses, compared to gp140 lacking a trimerization motif. However, modest differences in both binding specificity and neutralizing antibody responses were observed among the various immunogens.

Previous analysis of duck hepatitis B virus (DHBV) indicated the presence of at least two cis-acting sequences required for efficient encapsidation of its pregenomic RNA (pgRNA), and region II. , an RNA stem-loop near the 5 end of the pgRNA, has been characterized in detail, while region II, located in the middle of the pgRNA, is not as well defined. Our initial aim was to identify the sequence important for the function of region II in DHBV. We scanned region II and the surrounding sequence by using a quantitative encapsidation assay. We found that the sequence between nucleotides (nt) 438 and 720 contributed to efficient pgRNA encapsidation, while the sequence between nt 538 and 610 made the largest contribution to encapsidation. Additionally, deletions between the two encapsidation sequences, and region II, had variable effects on encapsidation, while substitutions of heterologous sequence between and region II disrupted the ability of the pgRNA to be encapsidated efficiently. Overall, these data indicate that the intervening sequences between and region II play a role in encapsidation. We also analyzed heron hepatitis B virus (HHBV) for the presence of region II and found features similar to DHBV: a broad region necessary for efficient encapsidation that contained a critical region II sequence. Furthermore, we analyzed variants of DHBV that were substituted with HHBV sequence over region II and found that the chimeras were not fully functional for RNA encapsidation. These results indicate that sequences within region II may need to be compatible with other viral components in order to function in pgRNA encapsidation.Hepadnaviruses are liver-tropic, small DNA viruses that replicate through an RNA intermediate called the pregenomic RNA (pgRNA) (for a review, see references 7 and 22). Hepadnaviruses characteristically cause acute and chronic hepatitis in their hosts. Members of the hepadnavirus family include the prototype, human hepatitis B virus (HBV), as well as the distantly related avian viruses duck hepatitis B virus (DHBV) and heron hepatitis B virus (HHBV). Although they are both avihepadnaviruses, DHBV and HHBV share only 79% nucleotide identity. Studying the avian hepadnaviruses has provided significant information about the molecular mechanisms of replication for this family of viruses.When a hepadnavirus infects a hepatocyte, its relaxed circular DNA genome is deposited into the nucleus and converted into covalently closed circular DNA (26). The pgRNA is transcribed from covalently closed circular DNA, and pgRNA is longer than genome length and contains a terminal redundancy (4) (Fig. 1). Once exported from the nucleus, the pgRNA is the mRNA for the viral polymerase (P) and core (C) proteins (6, 21). Additionally, pgRNA is encapsidated into capsids along with the P protein (1, 11), and the pgRNA becomes the template for reverse transcription (23). DNA synthesis occurs within capsids, and capsids containing mature viral DNA can be secreted by the cell as virions (29).There are several requirements fo...

Phylogenetic and distance analyses place Chino del tomate virus (CdTV) in the New World clade of begomoviruses and indicate that CdTV and Tomato leaf crumple virus (TLCrV) are closely related strains of the same virus. One cloned CdTV A component (pCdTV-H6), when inoculated to tomato with the B component (pCdTV-B52), produced mild symptoms and low DNA titers. Another cloned CdTV A component (pCdTV-H8), when coinoculated to tomato with the B component, produced moderate leaf curling and veinal chlorosis similar to that of TLCrV. Coinoculation of both CdTV A components and the B component to tomato produced wild-type chino del tomate (CdT) disease symptoms consisting of severe leaf curling, veinal and interveinal chlorosis, and stunting. The two CdTV A components were nearly identical, except at nucleotide positions 1,722 and 2,324. The polymorphism at nucleotide 1,722 resulted in a change at Rep amino acid 261. The second polymorphism at nucleotide 2,324 resulted in changes at Rep amino acid 60 and AC4 amino acid 10. Two chimeric A components constructed by reciprocal exchange of a fragment bearing the polymorphic site at nucleotide 1,722 were evaluated for symptom phenotype. One chimeric A component (pCdTV-H86) produced wild-type CdT symptoms when coinoculated to tomato with the B component. The reciprocal chimeric A component (pCdTV-H68), when coin-oculated to tomato with the B component, also produced severe leaf curling, veinal chlorosis, and stunting. However, pCdTV-H68 induced less obvious interveinal chlorosis than wild-type or pCdTV-H86. Examination of A component genotypes recovered from tomato coinoculated with pCdTV-H6 and pCdTV-H8 indicated that recombination occurred to produce a genotype identical to pCdTV-H86. These results indicate that subtle genotypic variation has significant effects on symptom expression and may explain phenotypic differences observed among isolates and cloned DNAs of CdTV and TLCrV.