Prolonged infection in rhesus macaques with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIVmac239) results in animal-specific and rarely tissue-specific selection of nef variants

Abstract

We analyzed the sequence of nef genes from different tissues of three rhesus macaques that had been infected with molecularly cloned SIVmac239 for 88 to 92 weeks. Comparison of the predicted amino acid sequences revealed that each macaque had selected out specific amino acid substitutions and that most of this variation (70%) was confined to four regions, amino acids 39 to 75, 90 to 105, 153 to 167, and 191 to 217, comprising 36% of the protein. The nef genes in these animals underwent extensive genetic variation with average nucleotide and amino acid substitution rates varying from 0.86 to 2.84% and 2.47 to 6.27%, respectively, although tissue-specific selection of nef variants occurred in only 1 of 14 tissues examined in this study. Comparison of the rate of nucleotide and amino acid substitutions in the nef genes to those previously reported in the env in the central nervous system (CNS) and lymph node (LN) revealed that the predicted amino acid substitution rates for Nef were much higher than for the gp120 region of env in the CNS and LN tissues for one macaque. In the two other macaques, the predicted amino acid substitution rates were similar between these two proteins in LN tissues, but the amino acid substitution rates in Nef were significantly higher than in the gp120 from the CNS. Comparison of the nucleotide substitutions in the region of overlap between the env and the nef revealed that approximately 83% of the nucleotide substitutions in this area resulted in a Nef amino acid sequence change, 26% of the nucleotide substitutions resulted in a gp41 amino acid change, and 9.5% of nucleotide substitutions resulted in amino acid sequence changes in both proteins, suggesting a preference for the selection of amino acid substitutions in the Nef in these animals. Our results indicate that in animals infected with SIVmac239 for prolonged periods, variation in the nef occurs at rates similar to or exceeding that observed for the env gene.