title: Internalization of Jembrana disease virus Tat: possible pathway and implication.
abstract: Jembrana disease virus (JDV) is a lentivirus highly related to the bovine immunodeficiency virus (BIV). It causes an acute disease with high mortality rate within 1-2 weeks. JDV encodes the most potent Tat (JTat) of any of the lentiviruses. JTat can transactivate all LTRs and functionally substitute for HIV Tat in the viral genome and may function as a pivotal regulator in the acute pathogenesis of JDV. The goal of this paper is to study JTat internalization by cells, the mechanisms involved in internalization, and the effect of JTat on neighbouring cells. By quantification and fluorescence microscopy, we found that the internalization of extracellular EGFP-JTat fusion protein was both time and dose-dependent, but endocytosis and energy independent. We identified that arginines which were responsible for the internalization. Internalized JTat was distributed in both the nucleus and the cytoplasm, could transactivate JDV LTR and modulate cellular gene expression. Based on our findings, we propose that secretion and internalization of JTat may be a way for JDV to influence neighbouring cells and make the cellular environment more amenable to viral infection.
authors.affiliation: College of Life Sciences and Tianjin State Laboratory of Microbial Functional Genomics, Nankai University, Tianjin, China.
authors.forename: Gang
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Deng
authors.forename: Wentao
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Qiao
authors.forename: Yang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Su
authors.forename: Rina
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Sha
authors.forename: Yunqi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Geng
authors.forename: Qimin
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Chen
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D001120:Arginine / Q000502:physiology; D002417:Cattle; D002467:Cell Nucleus / Q000378:metabolism; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D003593:Cytoplasm / Q000378:metabolism; D004705:Endocytosis; D005456:Fluorescent Dyes; D015696:Gene Products, tat / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology*; D049452:Green Fluorescent Proteins / Q000378:metabolism; D006801:Humans; D016180:Lentivirus Infections / Q000821:virology*; D017960:Lentiviruses, Bovine / Q000378:metabolism / Q000502:physiology*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D021381:Protein Transport; D011506:Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D020079:Terminal Repeat Sequences / Q000502:physiology; D015533:Transcriptional Activation
chemical_list: D005456:Fluorescent Dyes; D015696:Gene Products, tat; D011506:Proteins; C485184:enhanced green fluorescent protein; D049452:Green Fluorescent Proteins; D001120:Arginine