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Published on: July 15, 2019
Cyclophilin A interacts with diverse lentiviral capsids
1Pathobiology Graduate Program, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA. linty@u.washington.edu
Background:
The capsid (CA) protein of HIV-1 binds with high affinity to the host protein cyclophilin A (CypA). This binding positively affects some early stage of the viral life-cycle because prevention of binding either by drugs that occupy that active site of cyclophilin A, by mutation in HIV-1 CA, or RNAi that knocks down intracellular CypA level diminishes viral infectivity. The closely related lentivirus, SIVcpz also binds CypA, but it was thought that this interaction was limited to the HIV-1/SIVcpz lineage because other retroviruses failed to interact with CypA in a yeast two-hybrid assay.
Results:
We find that diverse lentiviruses, FIV and SIVagmTAN also bind to CypA. Mutagenesis of FIV CA showed that an amino acid that is in a homologous position to the proline at amino acid 90 of HIV-1 CA is essential for FIV interactions with CypA.
Conclusion:
These results demonstrate that CypA binding to lentiviruses is more widespread than previously thought and suggest that this interaction is evolutionarily important for lentiviral infection.
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