Abstract
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a global epidemic manifested mainly by chronic infection. One strategy that HCV employs to establish chronic infection is to use the viral Ser protease NS3/4A to cleave some unknown cellular targets involved in innate immunity. Here we show that the target of NS3/4A is the mitochondrial antiviral signaling protein, MAVS, that activates NF-κB and IFN regulatory factor 3 to induce type-l interferons. NS3/4A cleaves MAVS at Cys-508, resulting in the dislocation of the N-terminal fragment of MAVS from the mitochondria. Remarkably, a point mutation of MAVS at Cys-508 renders MAVS resistant to cleavage by NS3/4A, thus maintaining the ability of MAVS to induce interferons in HCV replicon cells. NS3/4A binds to and colocalizes with MAVS in the mitochondrial membrane, and it can cleave MAVS directly in vitro. These results provide an example of host-pathogen interaction in which the virus evades innate immunity by dislodging a pivotal antiviral protein from the mitochondria and suggest that blocking the cleavage of MAVS by NS3/4A may be applied to the prevention and treatment of HCV.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 17717-17722 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America |
Volume | 102 |
Issue number | 49 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 6 2005 |
Keywords
- IFN regulatory factor 3
- Iκb kinase
- NF-κb
- Retinoic acid-induced gene i
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General