• Welcome to Phoenix Rising!

    Created in 2008, Phoenix Rising is the largest and oldest forum dedicated to furthering the understanding of and finding treatments for complex chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia (FM), long COVID, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and allied diseases.

    To become a member, simply click the Register button at the top right.

Apobec 3G Efficiently Reduces Infectivity of the Human Exogenous Gammaretrovirus

V99

Senior Member
Messages
1,471
Location
UK
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0011738

Apobec 3G Efficiently Reduces Infectivity of the Human Exogenous Gammaretrovirus XMRV

Kristin Stieler, Nicole Fischer*
Institute for Medical Microbiology, Virology and Hygiene, University Medical Center Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
Abstract Top
Background
The human exogenous gammaretrovirus XMRV is thought to be implicated in prostate cancer and chronic fatigue syndrome. Besides pressing epidemiologic questions, the elucidation of the tissue and cell tropism of the virus, as well as its sensitivity to retroviral restriction factors is of fundamental importance. The Apobec3 (A3) proteins, a family of cytidine deaminases, are one important group of host proteins that control primary infection and efficient viral spread.

Methodology/Principal Findings
Here we demonstrate that XMRV is resistant to human Apobec 3B, 3C and 3F, while being highly susceptible to the human A3G protein, a factor which is known to confer antiviral activity against most retroviruses. We show that XMRV as well as MoMLV virions package Apobec proteins independent of their specific restriction activity. hA3G was found to be a potent inhibitor of XMRV as well as of MoMLV infectivity. In contrast to MoMLV, XMRV infection can also be partially reduced by low concentrations of mA3. Interestingly, established prostate cancer cell lines, which are highly susceptible to XMRV infection, do not or only weakly express hA3G.

Conclusions
Our findings confirm and extend recently published data that show restriction of XMRV infection by hA3G. The results will be of value to explore which cells are infected with XMRV and efficiently support viral spread in vivo. Furthermore, the observation that XMRV infection can be reduced by mA3 is of interest with regard to the current natural reservoir of XMRV infection.

Citation: Stieler K, Fischer N (2010) Apobec 3G Efficiently Reduces Infectivity of the Human Exogenous Gammaretrovirus XMRV. PLoS ONE 5(7): e11738. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0011738

Editor: Peter Sommer, Institut Pasteur Korea, Republic of Korea

Received: March 8, 2010; Accepted: June 16, 2010; Published: July 23, 2010

Copyright: 2010 Stieler, Fischer. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: This work was supported by the Wilhelm Sander Stiftung, grant 2005/166.1. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
 

judderwocky

Senior Member
Messages
328
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0011738

Apobec 3G Efficiently Reduces Infectivity of the Human Exogenous Gammaretrovirus XMRV

I think there is an interesting post by cort somewhere... maybe the "a different kind of xmrv" post that discusses some interesting twists with the restriction factors... some researchers have raised the possibility that there are different strains localized to different tissues based on the prevalence of these restriction factors... i might have that all backwards.