Journal: The EMBO Journal
Article Title: Interaction of chikungunya virus glycoproteins with macrophage factors controls virion production
doi: 10.1038/s44318-024-00193-3
Figure Lengend Snippet: ( A ) The pipeline for analyzing natural selection in the evolution of CHIKV structural proteins in human hosts. 397 CHIKV sequences isolated from infected individuals globally were downloaded from the NCBI virus database, and structural polyprotein sequence alignment was performed by MUSCLE(Edgar, ). The phylogenetic tree of CHIKV was constructed based on the maximum-likelihood (ML) optimality criterion with IQ-TREE (Minh et al, ; Trifinopoulos et al, ). The sites under positive selection were identified using mixed effects model of evolution (MEME) (Murrell et al, ) and fixed effects likelihood (FEL) (Kosakovsky Pond and Frost, ). ( B ) The positively selected sites identified by FEL or MEME are annotated in each CHIKV structural protein. The sites identified by MEME are colored in dark gray. Four of these sites (E2-164, 6K-47, E1-145, and E1-211) were identified with both methods and are colored in orange. ( C ) The positively selected sites in CHIKV structural proteins are plotted with the y-axis of −log 10 P values (determined by MEME or FEL) and the x-axis of the amino acid locations in the full-length structural polyprotein (from the beginning of capsid to the end of E1). The P values are generated by the FEL or MEME algorithm and adjusted with Benjamini–Hochberg correction. The statistically significant sites identified by MEME ( p < 0.05) are in blue, the ones identified by FEL (FEL p < 0.05) are in orange, and the ones identified by both methods (MEME p < 0.05 and FEL p < 0.05) are in orange with blue circles. ( D ) Comparison of virion production of CHIKV positive selection site mutants in THP-1 derived macrophages. The positive selection site in E2 or E1 of CHIKV 181/clone 25 was mutated to the homologous residue in ONNV, respectively, to generate six CHIKV mutants (E2-V135L, E2-A164T, E2-A246S, E1-E211K, E1-V220I, and E1-R366K). Macrophages were transfected with 0.5 μg RNA of CHIKV, ONNV, or CHIKV positive selection site mutants, and virion productions were determined by intracellular (+) vRNA transcript levels and supernatant infectious particle titers as previously described. Data were representative of three independent experiments. Mean values of biological duplicates were plotted with SD. Asterisks indicate statistically significant differences as compared to CHIKV (One-way ANOVA and Dunnett’s multiple comparisons test: viral titer of CHIKV vs E211K * p = 0.0414; viral copies of CHIKV vs ONNV **** p < 0.0001; viral copies of CHIKV vs V135L * p = 0.0228). ( E ) Representative plaque images of CHIKV E1 positive selection site mutants (E1-E211K, E1-V220I, E1-R366K) in comparison with CHIKV and ONNV. Plaque assays were performed on supernatant samples from transfected THP-1-derived macrophages as mentioned in ( D ). The incubation period for plaque assay is 40 h. The representative plaques from the 1:100 dilution are shown here. ( F ) The expression levels of viral nonstructural and structural proteins of CHIKV wild-type, E2-V135L, and E1-V220I mutants in THP-1 derived macrophages. The THP-1-derived macrophages were transfected with viral RNAs of CHIKV, E2-V135L, or E1-V220I mutant for 48 h. The expression levels of viral nsP3, E2, and E1 proteins were evaluated through immunoblotting. ( G ) Visualization of positively selected sites in single E2/E1 heterodimer with the presence of E3 from infectious CHIKV 181/clone 25 virus particle. The heterodimer structure was downloaded from PDB (6NK7)(Basore et al, ) and visualized in Chimera X (Pettersen et al, ). The positively selected sites E2-V135, E2-A164, and E2-A246 are located in β-ribbon arches flanking domain B in E2. The positively selected sites E1-E211 and E1-V220 are located in domain II in E1. The positively selected site E1-R366 is in domain III in E1. ( H ) The locations of E2-V135 (yellow nodes) and E1-V220 (orange nodes) in trimerized E2/E1 heterodimers (PDB: 6NK7). The E2 (cyan), E1 (purple), and E3 (gray) were annotated to show a single heterodimer unit. .
Article Snippet: The cells were then permeabilized in 0.1% Triton-X100 (Sigma-Aldrich) in PBS (v/v) and blocked in 3% FBS/PBS at room temperature for 1 h. The cells were incubated with primary antibodies targeting CHIKV E1 (GeneTex) and E2 (CHK-48) (Fox et al, ) (BEI Resources) diluted in blocking buffer at 4 degrees overnight, followed by 2-h incubation with secondary antibodies and Alexa Fluor 488 conjugated flag antibody (Invitrogen).
Techniques: Selection, Isolation, Infection, Virus, Sequencing, Construct, Generated, Comparison, Derivative Assay, Residue, Transfection, Incubation, Plaque Assay, Expressing, Mutagenesis, Western Blot