An endogenous accelerator for viral gene expression confers a fitness advantage.

Many signaling circuits face a fundamental tradeoff between accelerating their response speed while maintaining final levels below a cytotoxic threshold. Here, we describe a transcriptional circuitry that dynamically converts signaling inputs into faster rates without amplifying final equilibrium levels. Using time-lapse microscopy, we find that transcriptional activators accelerate human cytomegalovirus (CMV) gene expression in single cells without amplifying steady-state expression levels, and this acceleration generates a significant replication advantage. We map the accelerator to a highly self-cooperative transcriptional negative-feedback loop (Hill coefficient ∼7) generated by homomultimerization of the virus's essential transactivator protein IE2 at nuclear PML bodies. Eliminating the IE2-accelerator circuit reduces transcriptional strength through mislocalization of incoming viral genomes away from PML bodies and carries a heavy fitness cost. In general, accelerators may provide a mechanism for signal-transduction circuits to respond quickly to external signals without increasing steady-state levels of potentially cytotoxic molecules.

A molecular mechanism for probabilistic bet hedging and its role in viral latency.

Probabilistic bet hedging, a strategy to maximize fitness in unpredictable environments by matching phenotypic variability to environmental variability, is theorized to account for the evolution of various fate-specification decisions, including viral latency. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying bet hedging remain unclear. Here, we report that large variability in protein abundance within individual herpesvirus virion particles enables probabilistic bet hedging between viral replication and latency. Superresolution imaging of individual virions of the human herpesvirus cytomegalovirus (CMV) showed that virion-to-virion levels of pp71 tegument protein-the major viral transactivator protein-exhibit extreme variability. This super-Poissonian tegument variability promoted alternate replicative strategies: high virion pp71 levels enhance viral replicative fitness but, strikingly, impede silencing, whereas low virion pp71 levels reduce fitness but promote silencing. Overall, the results indicate that stochastic tegument packaging provides a mechanism enabling probabilistic bet hedging between viral replication and latency.

A Bioreactor Method to Generate High-titer, Genetically Stable, Clinical-isolate Human Cytomegalovirus.

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) infection is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in transplant patients and a leading cause of congenital birth defects (Saint Louis, 2016). Vaccination and therapeutic studies often require scalable cell culture production of wild type virus, represented by clinical isolates. Obtaining sufficient stocks of wild-type clinical HCMV is often labor intensive and inefficient due to low yield and genetic loss, presenting a barrier to studies of clinical isolates. Here we report a bioreactor method based on continuous infection, where retinal pigment epithelial (ARPE-19) cells adhered to microcarrier beads are infected in a bioreactor and used to produce high-titers of clinical isolate HCMV that maintain genetic integrity of key viral tropism factors and the viral genome. In this bioreactor, an end-stage infection can be maintained by regular addition of uninfected ARPE-19 cells, providing convenient preparation of 107-108 pfu/ml of concentrated TB40/E IE2-EYFP stocks without daily cell passaging or trypsinization. Overall, this represents a 100-fold increase in gain of virus production of 100-times compared to conventional static-culture plates, while requiring 90% less handling time. Moreover, this continuous infection environment has the potential to monitor infection dynamics with applications for real-time tracking of viral evolution.

Mapping the viral genetic determinants of endothelial cell tropism in human cytomegalovirus.

Endothelial cells are natural sites of infection for human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) and are increasingly recognized to play an important role in viral dissemination, as well as provide access to underlying tissues and organs. However, the viral factors required for endothelial cell tropism are poorly defined. The goals of the project were to develop a system to study endothelial cell infectivity factors in HCMV, and map the viral genetic determinants required for these tropism functions. HCMV infection of primary aortic endothelial cells (AEC) was studied as a means to evaluate aspects relevant to both pathogenesis of acute infection and chronic vascular diseases. A series of HCMV virus strains was screened for endothelial tropism by comparing replication efficiencies on AEC. A virus strain that was efficient for replication (AD169varATCC), and a virus strain that was restricted for replication (Toledo), were selected for further analysis and characterization. We present evidence for a novel HCMV endothelial tropism factor that functioned following viral internalization across the endothelial cell plasma membrane and prior to nuclear entry. This factor may be involved in intracellular transport of the virion capsid-tegument structure. Complementation approaches using pseudotype virus infection of AEC demonstrated that the tropism defective strain could be rescued in trans. This supported the existence of a viral encoded tropism determinant. Using a gain of function approach, endothelial cell infectivity of the non-tropic HCMV strain Toledo was rescued with AD169 cosmid sequences. Tropism-specific viral genetic determinant(s) may be mapped to a region of the AD169 viral DNA encompassing UL48-56.

Development of a high-throughput assay to measure the neutralization capability of anti-cytomegalovirus antibodies.

Infection by human cytomegalovirus (CMV) elicits a strong humoral immune response and robust anti-CMV antibody production. Diagnosis of virus infection can be carried out by using a variety of serological assays; however, quantification of serum antibodies against CMV may not present an accurate measure of a patient's ability to control a virus infection. CMV strains that express green fluorescent protein (GFP) fusion proteins can be used as screening tools for evaluating characteristics of CMV infection in vitro. In this study, we employed a CMV virus strain, AD169, that ectopically expresses a yellow fluorescent protein (YFP) fused to the immediate-early 2 (IE2) protein product (AD169IE2-YFP) to quantify a CMV infection in human cells. We created a high-throughput cell-based assay that requires minimal amounts of material and provides a platform for rapid analysis of the initial phase of virus infection, including virus attachment, fusion, and immediate-early viral gene expression. The AD169IE2-YFP cell infection system was utilized to develop a neutralization assay with a monoclonal antibody against the viral surface glycoprotein gH. The high-throughput assay was extended to measure the neutralization capacity of serum from CMV-positive subjects. These findings describe a sensitive and specific assay for the quantification of a key immunological response that plays a role in limiting CMV dissemination and transmission. Collectively, we have demonstrated that a robust high-throughput infection assay can analyze the early steps of the CMV life cycle and quantify the potency of biological reagents to attenuate a virus infection.

Endothelial damage from cytomegalovirus-specific host immune response can be prevented by targeted disruption of fractalkine-CX3CR1 interaction.

Human cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection has been linked to inflammatory diseases, including vascular disease and chronic transplant rejection, that involve vascular endothelial damage. We have previously shown that the host CD4(+) T-cell response to CMV antigen can produce IFNgamma and TNFalpha at levels sufficient to drive induction of fractalkine, a key marker of inflammation in endothelial cells. We have also observed a major pathogenic effect in which endothelial cell damage and loss follow the induction of fractalkine and up-regulation of cell adhesion markers in the presence of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from donors with a high CMV-specific T-cell frequency. In this report, we show that the fractalkine-CX(3)CR1 interaction resulting in recruitment of natural killer (NK) cells and monocyte-macrophages plays an important role in mediating this endothelial damage. Supportive evidence for frac-talkine's key role is shown by the ability of specific antibody to CX(3)CR1 to reduce significantly CX(3)CR1(+)-bearing cell chemoattraction and to protect against endothelial damage. These findings support CMV as a member of a class of persistent pathogens in which a high T-cell response and chemokine-mediated effects are a risk factor for development of chronic inflammation and endothelial cell injury.

High T-cell response to human cytomegalovirus induces chemokine-mediated endothelial cell damage.

Human cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection has been linked to inflammatory diseases that involve vascular endothelial damage, including vascular disease and chronic transplant rejection. We previously reported that the host CD4(+) T-cell response to CMV antigen presented by endothelial cells can produce interferon-gamma and tumor necrosis factor-alpha at levels sufficient to drive induction of fractalkine, a key marker of inflammation, in endothelial cells. In this work, we report that donors with high frequencies of antigen-specific T cells to CMV (high responders) induce higher levels of activation-associated chemokines such as fractalkine, RANTES (regulated on activation, normal T cell expressed and secreted), and macrophage inflammatory protein-1beta, together with cell-adhesion markers in endothelial cells compared with donors with low levels of CMV-specific T cells (low responders). High-responder cultures had higher levels of leukocyte recruitment and adherence to the endothelial monolayers associated with progressive damage and loss of the endothelial cells. These processes that led to endothelial destruction only required viral antigen and did not require infectious virus. Our findings further support that CMV may represent one member of a class of persistent pathogens in which a high antigen-specific T-cell response defines an important risk factor for development of chronic inflammation and endothelial cell injury.

Human cytomegalovirus-specific CD4+-T-cell cytokine response induces fractalkine in endothelial cells.

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection has been linked to inflammation-related disease processes in the human host, including vascular diseases and chronic transplant rejection. The mechanisms through which CMV affects the pathogenesis of these diseases are for the most part unknown. To study the contributing role of the host immune response to CMV in these chronic inflammatory processes, we examined endothelial cell interactions with peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC). Endothelial cultures were monitored for levels of fractalkine induction as a marker for initiating the host inflammatory response. Our results demonstrate that in the presence of CMV antigen PBMC from normal healthy CMV-seropositive donors produce soluble factors that induce fractalkine in endothelial cells. This was not observed in parallel assays with PBMC from seronegative donors. Examination of subset populations within the PBMC further revealed that CMV antigen-stimulated CD4(+) T cells were the source of the factors, gamma interferon and tumor necrosis factor alpha, driving fractalkine induction. Direct contact between CD4(+) cells and the endothelial monolayers is required for this fractalkine induction, where the endothelial cells appear to provide antigen presentation functions. These findings indicate that CMV may represent one member of a class of persistent pathogens where the antigen-specific T-cell response can result in the induction of fractalkine, leading to chronic inflammation and endothelial cell injury.