Suppression of human T-cell leukemia virus I gene expression by pokeweed antiviral protein

Human T-cell leukemia virus I (HTLV-I) is a deltaretrovirus that is the causative agent of adult T-cell leukemia and the neurological disorder HTLV-I-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis. Currently, no effective antiretroviral treatment options are available to restrict the development of diseases associated with the virus. In this work, we investigated the activity of pokeweed antiviral protein (PAP) on HTLV-I, when expressed from a proviral clone in 293T cells or in an HTLV-I immortalized cell line. PAP is a plant-derived N-glycosidase that exhibits antiviral activity against a number of viruses; however, its mode of action has not been clearly defined. Here, we describe the mechanism by which PAP inhibited production of HTLV-I. We show that PAP depurinated nucleotides within the gag open reading frame and suppressed the synthesis of viral proteins in part by decreasing the translational efficiency of HTLV-I gag/pol mRNA. Observed reduction in levels of viral mRNAs were not due to enhanced degradation; rather, decreased amounts of viral transactivator protein, Tax, led to feed-back inhibition of transcription from the viral promoter. Therefore, PAP efficiently suppressed HTLV-I gene expression at both translational and transcriptional levels, resulting in substantially diminished virus production. Significantly, no changes in viability or rates of cellular transcription or translation were observed in cells expressing PAP, indicating that this protein was not toxic. Antiviral activity, together with the absence of cytotoxicity, supports further investigation of this enzyme as a novel therapeutic agent against the progression of HTLV-I infection.