Ebola virus glycoprotein directly triggers T lymphocyte death despite of the lack of infection

PLoS Pathogens

Michael G. Katze¹  Richard A. Koup¹  Mathieu Iampietro²  Mukta Dutta²  Alexander Bukreyev²  Patrick Younan³  Ndongala Michel Lubaki³  Andrew Nishida⁴  Rodrigo I. Santos⁴ 

[1] Department of Microbiology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America;Department of Pathology, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas, United States of America;Galveston National Laboratory, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas, United States of America;University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas, United States of America

关键词: T cells;    Apoptosis;    Cell death;    Flow cytometry;    Cell differentiation;    Immune receptor signaling;    Necrotic cell death;    Monocytes;   

DOI  :  10.1371/journal.ppat.1006397

学科分类：生物科学（综合）

来源: Public Library of Science

【 摘 要 】

Fatal outcomes of Ebola virus (EBOV) infections are typically preceded by a ‘sepsis-like’ syndrome and lymphopenia despite T cells being resistant to Ebola infection. The mechanisms that lead to T lymphocytes death remain largely unknown; however, the degree of lymphopenia is highly correlative with fatalities. Here we investigated whether the addition of EBOV or its envelope glycoprotein (GP) to isolated primary human CD4+ T cells induced cell death. We observed a significant decrease in cell viability in a GP-dependent manner, which is suggestive of a direct role of GP in T cell death. Using immunoprecipitation assays and flow cytometry, we demonstrate that EBOV directly binds to CD4+ T cells through interaction of GP with TLR4. Transcriptome analysis revealed that the addition of EBOV to CD4+ T cells results in the significant upregulation of pathways associated with interferon signaling, pattern recognition receptors and intracellular activation of NFκB signaling pathway. Both transcriptome analysis and specific inhibitors allowed identification of apoptosis and necrosis as mechanisms associated with the observed T cell death following exposure to EBOV. The addition of the TLR4 inhibitor CLI-095 significantly reduced CD4+ T cell death induced by GP. EBOV stimulation of primary CD4+ T cells resulted in a significant increase in secreted TNFα; inhibition of TNFα-mediated signaling events significantly reduced T cell death while inhibitors of both necrosis and apoptosis similarly reduced EBOV-induced T cell death. Lastly, we show that stimulation with EBOV or GP augments monocyte maturation as determined by an overall increase in expression levels of markers of differentiation. Subsequently, the increased rates of cellular differentiation resulted in higher rates of infection further contributing to T cell death. These results demonstrate that GP directly subverts the host’s immune response by increasing the susceptibility of monocytes to EBOV infection and triggering lymphopenia through direct and indirect mechanisms.

【 授权许可】

CC BY