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Short Communication |
Institute for Clinical and Molecular Virology, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany
Correspondence
Manfred Marschall
manfred.marschall{at}viro.med.uni-erlangen.de
| ABSTRACT |
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as a kinase phosphorylating PB1 and NS1, but not PB2, PA or NP. Gö6976 was able to block PKC-specific phosphorylation in vitro. Thus, our data suggest that PKC contributes to the phosphorylation of influenza PB1 and NS1 proteins which appears to be functionally relevant for both viral RNA polymerase activity and efficient viral replication. A supplementary table of primer sequences and a supplementary figure are available with the online version of this paper.
| MAIN TEXT |
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We used the PKC inhibitor Gö6976 (Goekjian & Jirousek, 1999
; Marschall et al., 2001
; Sieczkarski et al., 2003
) (Calbiochem) to study specific effects on influenza virus replication. 293T cells were cultivated in Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium containing 10 % fetal calf serum. Transient transfection of 293T cells was performed in 12-well plates at a confluence of 70–90 % (seeding cell number 2.5x105) by using Lipofectamine 2000 (Invitrogen). The influenza-specific green fluorescent protein (GFP) construct pHH21-NP-UTRhi-eGFP (Lutz et al., 2005
) served as a reporter of viral replication. One day post-transfection with the reporter construct, cells were infected with influenza A/WSN/33 virus and were subsequently cultivated in the presence or absence of Gö6976 (Fig. 1a
). A dose-dependent inhibition of virus replication was noted, with 70 % inhibition at 5 µM Gö6976. To confirm the reporter assay, quantitative RT-PCR (qRT-PCR) was performed to analyse influenza virus RNA production in infected cells. Data showed that after Gö6976 treatment, there was a substantial reduction in viral RNA. At 2 days post-infection, there was a 4.5-fold inhibitory effect (Supplementary Fig. S1, available in JGV Online). As an additional control, cells were infected under treatment with cycloheximide (50 µg ml–1) and cytoplasmic/nuclear viral particles in the post-entry phase (8 h) were visualized by immunofluorescence staining using monoclonal antibody (mAb)-M1 and mAb-NP. When Gö6976 was present during viral adsorption/entry, virus uptake was reduced, confirming the previous report that Gö6976 can block viral entry (Sieczkarski et al., 2003
). Furthermore, our data indicated that Gö6976 had almost no effect on virus uptake when added immediately after the adsorption/entry phase (Fig. 1a
) or at later time points (data not shown). Gö6976 (at the concentrations tested) did not induce microscopically detectable alterations in cytotoxicity of treated 293T cells (data not shown). No increase in apoptosis signals was noted using a standard assay using highly apoptosis-sensitive Raji cells (Fig. 1b
) or with 293T cells (which produced similar results, albeit with a lower quantitative level and uniformity of signal; data not shown).
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-33P]ATP. Phosphorylated proteins were detected by SDS-PAGE followed by Wb and exposure on phosphoimager plates. The integrity of recombinant expression products was monitored by a subsequent Wb staining of the IVKA blot (mAb-FLAG; data not shown). The data revealed the phosphorylation of FLAG-tagged F-PB1 and F-NS1, but not F-NP, by recombinant PKC
-F (Fig. 3a
-F, indicated that contamination by other protein kinases was not responsible for the reaction. A Wb expression control ascertained that sufficient amounts of proteins were produced (Fig. 3a
-33P-labelled orthophosphate (150 µCi) and confirmed, by SDS-PAGE analysis, that F-NS1 was strongly phosphorylated (data not shown). However, not all influenza viral phosphoproteins described in the literature could be confirmed in this way, leading to the assumption that phosphorylation of some proteins may only be detectable under virus replication conditions. A fusion construct for PKC
-GFP was additionally used to confirm that the higher molecular mass of this kinase construct allowed a clear distinction from the polymerase proteins on the IVKA blot (Fig. 3b
-GFP (Fig. 3b
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can phosphorylate NS1 and PB1 in vitro and (v) in vitro phosphorylation is sensitive to various PKC inhibitors.
We used a set of constructs previously generated by Lutz et al. (2005)
and Hoffmann et al. (2000)
to perform reporter assays in transiently transfected 293T cells. A similar approach was described very recently by Hoffmann et al. (2008)
. The assay system allowed us to quantify on the one hand the replication efficiency of influenza A virus and on the other hand the intracellular activity of a reconstituted viral RNA polymerase complex. Previous reports have demonstrated that PKC activity is required for viral entry and that PKC inhibitors induced an accumulation of virus in late endosomes (Root et al., 2000
; Sieczkarski et al., 2003
). However, it was a novel finding that Gö6976 exerted a post-entry inhibitory effect, as indicated by the RNA polymerase-based reporter assay. Although this approach could not strictly differentiate between potential underlying mechanisms, our data clearly demonstrate an inhibitory effect by PKC inhibitor Gö6976 but not by the other analysed protein kinase inhibitors. It is noteworthy that nuclear translocation of NP is one of the viral replicative steps dependent on PKC activity (Bui et al., 2002
; Neumann et al., 1997
; Root et al., 2000
). However, this may not fully explain the PKC dependence of viral RNA production and replication, particularly when taking into account the phosphorylation data from the present study. We detected the phosphorylation of PB1 and NS1 by PKC
in vitro but did not detect phosphorylation of other viral proteins such as NP. This strongly suggests that the phosphorylation state of PB1 and NS1 contributes to functionality. Hale et al. (2008b)
described the phosphorylation of NS1 at threonine 215 (by CDKs and ERK2), concluding that this modification is important for NS1 function and efficient virus replication. Moreover, it was reported that PKC inhibitors such as rottlerin were very effective in reducing viral replication and that activation of PKC led to enhanced virus production (Hoffmann et al., 2008
). In combination, these reports underline the high functional importance of PKC for several steps of the influenza A virus replication cycle. Our study provides new insight into the PKC–virus interaction and highlights the multiple roles that cellular kinases have in influenza virus biology.
| ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS |
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Received 24 November 2008;
accepted 5 February 2009.
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