Cyclophilin A-regulated ubiquitination is critical for RIG-I-mediated antiviral immune responses

  1. Wei Liu
  2. Jing Li
  3. Weinan Zheng
  4. Yingli Shang
  5. Zhendong Zhao
  6. Shanshan Wang
  7. Yuhai Bi
  8. Shuang Zhang
  9. Chongfeng Xu
  10. Ziyuan Duan
  11. Lianfeng Zhang
  12. Yue Lynn Wang
  13. Zhengfan Jiang
  14. Wenjun Liu  Is a corresponding author
  15. Lei Sun  Is a corresponding author
  1. Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
  2. Shandong Agricultural University, China
  3. Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, China
  4. University of Chicago, United States
  5. School of Life Sciences, Peking University, China

Abstract

RIG-I is a key cytosolic pattern recognition receptor that interacts with MAVS to induce type I interferons (IFNs) against RNA virus infection. In this study, we found that cyclophilin A (CypA), a peptidyl-prolyl cis/trans isomerase, functioned as a critical positive regulator of RIG-I-mediated antiviral immune responses. Deficiency of CypA impaired RIG-I-mediated type I IFN production and promoted viral replication in human cells and mice. Upon Sendai virus infection, CypA increased the interaction between RIG-I and its E3 ubiquitin ligase TRIM25, leading to enhanced TRIM25-mediated K63-linked ubiquitination of RIG-I that facilitated recruitment of RIG-I to MAVS. In addition, CypA and TRIM25 competitively interacted with MAVS, thereby inhibiting TRIM25-induced K48-linked ubiquitination of MAVS. Taken together, our findings reveal an essential role of CypA in boosting RIG-I-mediated antiviral immune responses by controlling the ubiquitination of RIG-I and MAVS.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Wei Liu

    CAS Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiology and Immunology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Jing Li

    CAS Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiology and Immunology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Weinan Zheng

    CAS Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiology and Immunology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Yingli Shang

    College of Veterinary Medicine, Shandong Agricultural University, Tai'an, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Zhendong Zhao

    CAS Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiology and Immunology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  6. Shanshan Wang

    CAS Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiology and Immunology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  7. Yuhai Bi

    CAS Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiology and Immunology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  8. Shuang Zhang

    CAS Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiology and Immunology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  9. Chongfeng Xu

    Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  10. Ziyuan Duan

    Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  11. Lianfeng Zhang

    Key Laboratory of Human Disease Comparative Medicine, Ministry of Health, Institute of Laboratory Animal Science, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  12. Yue Lynn Wang

    Department of Pathology, University of Chicago, Chicago, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  13. Zhengfan Jiang

    The Education Ministry Key Laboratory of Cell Proliferation and Differentiation, School of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  14. Wenjun Liu

    CAS Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiology and Immunology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
    For correspondence
    liuwj@im.ac.cn
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  15. Lei Sun

    CAS Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiology and Immunology, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
    For correspondence
    sunlei362@im.ac.cn
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-0141-2093

Funding

National Natural Science Foundation of China (31472178)

  • Lei Sun

National Natural Science Foundation of China (31672531)

  • Lei Sun

Key Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (KSZD-EW-Z-005-001)

  • Wenjun Liu

National Key Technology Support Program of China (2015BAD11B02)

  • Lei Sun

National Natural Science Foundation of China (81621091)

  • Wenjun Liu

National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFC1201001)

  • Lei Sun

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Ronald N Germain, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, United States

Ethics

Animal experimentation: The animal research was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Permit Number: PZIMCAS2013001), and complied with the Beijing Laboratory Animal Welfare and Ethical Guidelines of the Beijing Administration Committee of Laboratory Animals.

Version history

  1. Received: December 19, 2016
  2. Accepted: June 7, 2017
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: June 8, 2017 (version 1)
  4. Version of Record published: June 26, 2017 (version 2)

Copyright

© 2017, Liu et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

Metrics

  • 2,995
    views
  • 838
    downloads
  • 72
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Wei Liu
  2. Jing Li
  3. Weinan Zheng
  4. Yingli Shang
  5. Zhendong Zhao
  6. Shanshan Wang
  7. Yuhai Bi
  8. Shuang Zhang
  9. Chongfeng Xu
  10. Ziyuan Duan
  11. Lianfeng Zhang
  12. Yue Lynn Wang
  13. Zhengfan Jiang
  14. Wenjun Liu
  15. Lei Sun
(2017)
Cyclophilin A-regulated ubiquitination is critical for RIG-I-mediated antiviral immune responses
eLife 6:e24425.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.24425

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.24425

Further reading

    1. Evolutionary Biology
    2. Immunology and Inflammation
    Mark S Lee, Peter J Tuohy ... Michael S Kuhns
    Research Advance

    CD4+ T cell activation is driven by five-module receptor complexes. The T cell receptor (TCR) is the receptor module that binds composite surfaces of peptide antigens embedded within MHCII molecules (pMHCII). It associates with three signaling modules (CD3γε, CD3δε, and CD3ζζ) to form TCR-CD3 complexes. CD4 is the coreceptor module. It reciprocally associates with TCR-CD3-pMHCII assemblies on the outside of a CD4+ T cells and with the Src kinase, LCK, on the inside. Previously, we reported that the CD4 transmembrane GGXXG and cytoplasmic juxtamembrane (C/F)CV+C motifs found in eutherian (placental mammal) CD4 have constituent residues that evolved under purifying selection (Lee et al., 2022). Expressing mutants of these motifs together in T cell hybridomas increased CD4-LCK association but reduced CD3ζ, ZAP70, and PLCγ1 phosphorylation levels, as well as IL-2 production, in response to agonist pMHCII. Because these mutants preferentially localized CD4-LCK pairs to non-raft membrane fractions, one explanation for our results was that they impaired proximal signaling by sequestering LCK away from TCR-CD3. An alternative hypothesis is that the mutations directly impacted signaling because the motifs normally play an LCK-independent role in signaling. The goal of this study was to discriminate between these possibilities. Using T cell hybridomas, our results indicate that: intracellular CD4-LCK interactions are not necessary for pMHCII-specific signal initiation; the GGXXG and (C/F)CV+C motifs are key determinants of CD4-mediated pMHCII-specific signal amplification; the GGXXG and (C/F)CV+C motifs exert their functions independently of direct CD4-LCK association. These data provide a mechanistic explanation for why residues within these motifs are under purifying selection in jawed vertebrates. The results are also important to consider for biomimetic engineering of synthetic receptors.

    1. Genetics and Genomics
    2. Immunology and Inflammation
    Jean-David Larouche, Céline M Laumont ... Claude Perreault
    Research Article

    Transposable elements (TEs) are repetitive sequences representing ~45% of the human and mouse genomes and are highly expressed by medullary thymic epithelial cells (mTECs). In this study, we investigated the role of TEs on T-cell development in the thymus. We performed multiomic analyses of TEs in human and mouse thymic cells to elucidate their role in T-cell development. We report that TE expression in the human thymus is high and shows extensive age- and cell lineage-related variations. TE expression correlates with multiple transcription factors in all cell types of the human thymus. Two cell types express particularly broad TE repertoires: mTECs and plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs). In mTECs, transcriptomic data suggest that TEs interact with transcription factors essential for mTEC development and function (e.g., PAX1 and REL), and immunopeptidomic data showed that TEs generate MHC-I-associated peptides implicated in thymocyte education. Notably, AIRE, FEZF2, and CHD4 regulate small yet non-redundant sets of TEs in murine mTECs. Human thymic pDCs homogenously express large numbers of TEs that likely form dsRNA, which can activate innate immune receptors, potentially explaining why thymic pDCs constitutively secrete IFN ɑ/β. This study highlights the diversity of interactions between TEs and the adaptive immune system. TEs are genetic parasites, and the two thymic cell types most affected by TEs (mTEcs and pDCs) are essential to establishing central T-cell tolerance. Therefore, we propose that orchestrating TE expression in thymic cells is critical to prevent autoimmunity in vertebrates.