Recognition of conserved bacterial products by innate immune receptors leads to inflammatory responses that control pathogen spread but that can also result in pathology. Intestinal epithelial cells are exposed to bacterial products and therefore must prevent signaling through innate immune receptors to avoid pathology. However, enteric pathogens are able to stimulate intestinal inflammation. We show here that the enteric pathogen Salmonella Typhimurium can stimulate innate immune responses in cultured epithelial cells by mechanisms that do not involve receptors of the innate immune system. Instead, S. Typhimurium stimulates these responses by delivering through its type III secretion system the bacterial effector proteins SopE, SopE2, and SopB, which in a redundant fashion stimulate Rho-family GTPases leading to the activation of mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase and NF-κB signaling. These observations have implications for the understanding of the mechanisms by which Salmonella Typhimurium induces intestinal inflammation as well as other intestinal inflammatory pathologies.

HIV-1 Nef is a key factor in AIDS pathogenesis. Here, we report that Nef potently inhibits motility of fibroblasts and chemotaxis of HIV-1-infected primary human T lymphocytes toward the chemokines SDF-1alpha, CCL-19, and CCL-21 ex vivo. Furthermore, Nef inhibits guided motility of zebrafish primordial germ cells toward endogenous SDF-1a in vivo. These migration defects result from Nef-mediated inhibition of the actin remodeling normally triggered by migratory stimuli. Nef strongly induces phosphorylation of cofilin, inactivating this evolutionarily conserved actin-depolymerizing factor that promotes cell motility when unphosphorylated. Nef-dependent cofilin deregulation requires association of Nef with the cellular kinase Pak2. Disruption of Nef-Pak2 association restores the cofilin phosphorylation levels and actin remodeling that facilitate cell motility. We conclude that HIV-1 Nef alters Pak2 function, which directly or indirectly inactivates cofilin, thereby restricting migration of infected T lymphocytes as part of a strategy to optimize immune evasion and HIV-1 replication.

The RhoA-effector Dia1 controls actin-dependent processes such as cytokinesis, SRF transcriptional activity, and cell motility. Dia1 polymerizes actin through its formin homology (FH) 2 domain. Here we show that Dia1 acts upstream of RhoA independently of its effects on actin assembly. Dia1 binds to the leukemia-associated Rho-GEF (LARG) through RhoA-dependent release of Dia1 autoinhibition. The FH2 domain stimulates the guanine nucleotide exchange activity of LARG in vitro. Our results reveal that Dia1 is necessary for LPA-stimulated Rho/ROCK signaling and bleb-associated cancer cell invasion. Thus, Dia1-dependent RhoA activation constitutes a positive feedback mechanism to modulate cell behavior.Supplemental material is available at http://www.genesdev.org.Received January 11, 2007; revised version accepted May 8, 2007. Diaphanous-related formins (DRFs) are Rho-GTPasebinding proteins that possess conserved functions in actin cytoskeleton dynamics exerted through their formin homology (FH) 2 domains (Goode and Eck 2007). DRFs are involved in essential cellular processes such as cytokinesis, cell movement, and polarity (Faix and Grosse 2006;Gomez et al. 2007), which are frequently deregulated during pathological situations like tumor cell transformation and metastasis (Sahai 2005). The dormant conformation of the DRF Dia1 is maintained by intramolecular association of its regulatory N terminus to the diaphanous autoregulatory domain (DAD), which is relieved through binding of active RhoA (Lammers et al. 2005;Otomo et al. 2005a). The catalytic FH2 domain is believed to become "exposed" by conformational changes in the DRFs to promote barbed end actin polymerization by forming a tethered dimer (Xu et al. 2004;Otomo et al. 2005a). The FH2 domain of Dia1 promotes stress fiber formation and transcriptional activation of the MAL/SRF pathway through its actin-polymerizing activity (Copeland and Treisman 2002;Grosse et al. 2003;Miralles et al. 2003). A Dia1 mutant defective in FH2 dimerization interferes with lysophosphatidic acid (LPA)-induced stress fiber formation and SRF activity (Copeland and Treisman 2002), suggesting that Dia1 is part of LPA signal transduction known to play an important role in cell proliferation and metastasis of a variety of human cancers (Mills and Moolenaar 2003). LPA receptors belong to the group of G-protein-coupled receptors that activate the heterotrimeric G-proteins G 12 and G 13 , which can bind to RGS-containing Rho-GEFs such as leukemia-associated Rho-GEF (LARG), initially isolated from a patient with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) (Kourlas et al. 2000;Vazquez-Prado et al. 2004). Rhodependent mechanisms have emerged as critical processes in tumor progression (Sahai and Marshall 2002;Lozano et al. 2003), and evidence exists that Rho/ROCK function is essential to promote a specific type of rounded bleb-associated mode of cell invasion (Sahai and Marshall 2003;Wyckoff et al. 2006). However, the role of DRFs in tumor cell behavior has not been investigated.In this study, we provide evi...

The Nef protein is a key determinant of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) pathogenicity that, among other activities, sensitizes T-lymphocytes for optimal virus production. The initial events by which Nef modulates the T-cell receptor (TCR) cascade are poorly understood.TCRengagementtriggersactinrearrangementsthatcontrol receptor clustering for signal initiation and dynamic organization of signaling protein complexes to form an immunological synapse. Here we report that Nef potently interferes with cell spreading and formation of actin-rich circumferential rings in T-lymphocytes upon surface-supported TCR stimulation. These effects were conserved among Nef proteins from different lentiviruses and occurred in HIV-1-infected primary human T-lymphocytes. This novel Nef activity critically depended on its Src homology 3 domain binding motif and required efficient association with Pak2 activity. Notably, whereas overall signaling microcluster formation immediately following TCR engagement occurred normally in Nef-expressing cells, the viral protein inhibited the concomitant activation of the actin organizer N-Wasp. During the subsequent maturation phase of the stimulatory contact, Nef interfered with the translocation of N-Wasp to the cell periphery, the overall induction of tyrosine phosphorylation, and the selective recruitment of phosphorylated LAT to stimulatory contacts. Consistent with such a critical role of N-Wasp in this process, Nef also blocked morphological changes induced by the known N-Wasp regulators Rac1 and Cdc42. Together, our results demonstrate that Nef alters both the amount and composition of signaling microclusters. We propose modulation of actin dynamics as an important mechanism for Nef-induced alterations of TCR signaling.The Nef protein of the primate lentiviruses HIV-1/-2 2 and simian immunodeficiency virus is a crucial pathogenicity factor and substantially increases virus replication in vivo (1-4). Whereas the underlying molecular mechanisms remain to be fully elucidated, Nef facilitates immune evasion of infected cells and directly boosts virus spread. These effector functions probably reflect the ability of Nef to serve as a protein-interaction adaptor that modulates cellular vesicle transport and signal transduction machineries (5, 6). In CD4 ϩ T-lymphocytes, one of the major HIV-1 target cell populations in vivo, Nef lowers the threshold of TCR activation possibly to induce an intermediate activation state that is permissive for HIV-1 replication (7-12). Several protein assemblies, including the association with the Nef-associated kinase complex, the guanine exchange factors Vav and DOCK2-ELMO1, and the TCR chain, are involved in the modulation of TCR signaling by Nef (13-16). However, it has not been addressed how Nef affects early events of TCR signal initiation. Physiologically, TCR triggering occurs in the context of a close contact between a T-cell and antigenpresenting cell referred to as the immunological synapse (IS). Within this highly dynamic structure, spatial redistribut...

Summary Cell-autonomous defense mechanisms are potent strategies that protect individual cells against intracellular pathogens. The Rab-family GTPase Rab32 was previously shown to restrict the intracellular human pathogen Salmonella Typhi, but its potential broader role in antimicrobial defense remains unknown. We show that Rab32 represents a general cell-autonomous, antimicrobial defense that is counteracted by two Salmonella effectors. Mice lacking Rab-32 or its nucleotide exchange factor BLOC-3 are permissive to S. Typhi infection and exhibit increased susceptibility to S. Typhimurium. S. Typhimurium counters this defense pathway by delivering two type III secretion effectors, SopD2, a Rab32 GAP, and GtgE, a specific Rab32 protease. An S. Typhimurium mutant strain lacking these two effectors exhibits markedly reduced virulence, which is fully restored in BLOC-3-deficient mice. These results demonstrate that a cell-autonomous, Rab32-dependent host defense pathway plays a central role in the defense against vacuolar pathogens and describe a mechanism evolved by a bacterial pathogen to counter it.