Interaction of nonstructural protein NS3 of African horsesickness virus with viral and cellular proteins

Abstract

African horsesickness virus (AHSV) is a dsRNA virus that belongs to the Orbivirus genus within the Reoviridae family. Each of the ten viral dsRNA segments encodes one virus-specific protein. During its life cycle AHSV replicates both in an insect vector and in a mammalian host, but while it has no detrimental effect on insect cells the virus is highly pathogenic to mammalian cells. It is postulated that this relates to different viral release mechanisms. Currently the main candidate for mediating viral release in both insects and mammals is the viral nonstructural protein NS3. In bluetongue virus (BTV), the prototype virus of the Orbivirus genus, it has been shown that NS3 interacts with both the viral outer capsid protein VP2 and a cellular exocytosis protein. For AHSV, we investigated whether the same mechanism was involved in viral release. This study aimed to identify and map possible protein-protein interaction between AHSV NS3 and VP2, and AHSV NS3 and unknown insect cellular proteins. For investigating the NS3-VP2 interactions a eukaryotic expression system (yeast twohybrid), a column binding assay utilising bacterially expressed NS3 and recombinant baculovirus expressed VP2 as well as a membrane flotation assay utilising recombinant baculovirus expressed VP2 and NS3-GFP, were used. A number of problems were encountered and no conclusive results were obtained. For investigating viral-cellular protein interactions the yeast two-hybrid system was also used, utilising NS3 as bait to screen proteins expressed from a Drosophila cDNA library. Results showed an interaction between the N-terminal region of AHSV NS3 and ubiquitin, an essential protein for the trafficking and degradation of membrane proteins from the endoplasmic reticulum. It also acts as a sorting signal in both the secretory pathway and in endosomes, where it targets proteins into multivesicular bodies in the lumen of vacuoles/lysosomes. It has been shown that ubiquitin could play a role in the pinching off of budding vesicles. An AHSV infected cell could therefore potentially use ubiquitin in its vesicular budding pathway, therefore giving the opportunity for viruses to use this to release them from the cell. The Hsp70 was another protein identified that interacts with AHSV NS3. This protein plays a role in folding reactions, protein translocation across membranes of organelles and protein assembly. It has been reported in other studies done that both ubiquitin and Hsp70 play roles in regulating the bioavailability of viral proteins, which could explain the different levels of NS3, high in insect cells and low in mammalian cells, which indirectly control the viral exit pathway used, budding versus lytic release. These results lay the foundation for explaining the potential role of NS3 in the AHSV life cycle in insect cells.