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Detection of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 HIV-1 Antisense Protein ASP RNA Transcripts in Patients by Strand-Specific RT-PCR
Published on: November 27, 2019
The Human Immunodeficiency Virus 1 ASP RNA promotes viral latency by recruiting the Polycomb Repressor Complex 2 and
Juan C Zapata1, Federica Campilongo1, Robert A Barclay2
1Institute of Human Virology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Abstract:
Various epigenetic marks at the HIV-1 5'LTR suppress proviral expression and promote latency. Cellular antisense transcripts known as long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) recruit the polycomb repressor complex 2 (PRC2) to gene promoters, which catalyzes trimethylation of lysine 27 on histone H3 (H3K27me3), thus promoting nucleosome assembly and suppressing gene expression. We found that an HIV-1 antisense transcript expressed from the 3'LTR and encoding the antisense protein ASP promotes proviral latency. Expression of ASP RNA reduced HIV-1 replication in Jurkat cells. Moreover, ASP RNA expression promoted the establishment and maintenance of HIV-1 latency in Jurkat E4 cells. We show that this transcript interacts with and recruits PRC2 to the HIV-1 5'LTR, increasing accumulation of the suppressive epigenetic mark H3K27me3, while reducing RNA Polymerase II and thus proviral transcription. Altogether, our results suggest that the HIV-1 ASP transcript promotes epigenetic silencing of the HIV-1 5'LTR and proviral latency through the PRC2 pathway.
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