Dynamics of HIV-1 coinfection in different susceptible target cell populations during cell-free infection.

HIV-1 mutations rapidly accumulate through genetic recombination events, which require the infection of a single cell by two virions (coinfection). Accumulation of mutations in the viral population may lead to immune escape and high-level drug resistance. The existence of cell subpopulations characterized by different susceptibility to HIV-1 infection has been proposed as an important parameter driving coinfection (Dang et al., 2004). While the mechanism and the quantification of HIV-1 coinfection have been recently investigated by mathematical models, the detailed dynamics of this process during cell-free infection remains elusive. In this study, we constructed ordinary differential equations considering the heterogeneity of target cell populations during cell-free infection in cell culture, and reproduced the cell culture experimental data. Our mathematical analyses showed that the presence of two differently susceptible target cell subpopulations could explain our experimental datasets, while increasing the number of subpopulations did not improve the fitting. In addition, we quantitatively demonstrated that cells infected by multiple viruses mainly accumulated from one cell subpopulation under cell-free infection conditions. In particular, the frequency of infection events in the more susceptible subpopulation was 6.11-higher than that from the other subpopulation, and 98.3% of coinfected cells emerged from the more susceptible subpopulation. Our mathematical-experimental approach is able to extract such a quantitative information, and can be easily applied to other virus infections.

Number of infection events per cell during HIV-1 cell-free infection.

HIV-1 accumulates changes in its genome through both recombination and mutation during the course of infection. For recombination to occur, a single cell must be infected by two HIV strains. These coinfection events were experimentally demonstrated to occur more frequently than would be expected for independent infection events and do not follow a random distribution. Previous mathematical modeling approaches demonstrated that differences in target cell susceptibility can explain the non-randomness, both in the context of direct cell-to-cell transmission, and in the context of free virus transmission (Q. Dang et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 101:632-7, 2004: K. M. Law et al., Cell reports 15:2711-83, 2016). Here, we build on these notions and provide a more detailed and extensive quantitative framework. We developed a novel mathematical model explicitly considering the heterogeneity of target cells and analysed datasets of cell-free HIV-1 single and double infection experiments in cell culture. Particularly, in contrast to the previous studies, we took into account the different susceptibility of the target cells as a continuous distribution. Interestingly, we showed that the number of infection events per cell during cell-free HIV-1 infection follows a negative-binomial distribution, and our model reproduces these datasets.

Kinetics of the establishment of HIV-1 viral interference and comprehensive analysis of the contribution of viral genes.

Viral interference defines the reduced susceptibility of an infected cell to reinfection. For HIV-1, both receptor-dependent and independent pathways were described. The relative importance of different receptor-independent pathways has not been addressed. We have used reporter viruses to quantify the percentage of single- and double-infected cells, as a function of the delay between the two infections. For co-infection experiments, the frequency of double infected cells was higher than expected for independent events. By delaying the second infection, this frequency progressively diminished, resulting in significant interference after 18h. Interference measured here was largely receptor-independent. By individually deleting viral genes or expressing them in isolation, we demonstrate that the viral protein Rev plays a dominant role, while other viral proteins contributes to optimal interference. Our study defines the kinetics of early HIV-1 interference, describing the transition from higher susceptibility to double-infection to viral interference, and identifies Rev as its dominant effector.

Identification of protein interfaces within the multi-aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase complex: the case of lysyl-tRNA synthetase and the scaffold protein p38.

Human cytoplasmic lysyl-tRNA synthetase (LysRS) is associated within a multi-aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase complex (MSC). Within this complex, the p38 component is the scaffold protein that binds the catalytic domain of LysRS via its N-terminal region. In addition to its translational function when associated to the MSC, LysRS is also recruited in nontranslational roles after dissociation from the MSC. The balance between its MSC-associated and MSC-dissociated states is essential to regulate the functions of LysRS in cellular homeostasis. With the aim of understanding the rules that govern association of LysRS in the MSC, we analyzed the protein interfaces between LysRS and the full-length version of p38, the scaffold protein of the MSC. In a previous study, the cocrystal structure of LysRS with a N-terminal peptide of p38 was reported [Ofir-Birin Y et al. (2013) Mol Cell 49, 30-42]. In order to identify amino acid residues involved in interaction of the two proteins, the non-natural, photo-cross-linkable amino acid p-benzoyl-l-phenylalanine (Bpa) was incorporated at 27 discrete positions within the catalytic domain of LysRS. Among the 27 distinct LysRS mutants, only those with Bpa inserted in place of Lys356 or His364 were cross-linked with p38. Using mass spectrometry, we unambiguously identified the protein interface of the cross-linked complex and showed that Lys356 and His364 of LysRS interact with the peptide from Pro8 to Arg26 in native p38, in agreement with the published cocrystal structure. This interface, which in LysRS is located on the opposite side of the dimer to the site of interaction with its tRNA substrate, defines the core region of the MSC. The residues identified herein in human LysRS are not conserved in yeast LysRS, an enzyme that does not associate within the MSC, and contrast with the residues proposed to be essential for LysRS:p38 association in the earlier work.