Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is the primary etiologic agent responsible for the AIDS pandemic. In this work, we used a chimeric recombinant protein strategy to test the possibility of irreversibly destroying the HIV-1 virion using an agent that simultaneously binds the Env protein and viral membrane. We constructed a fusion of the lectin cyanovirin-N (CVN) and the gp41 membrane-proximal external region (MPER) peptide with a variable-length (Gly 4 Ser) x linker (where x is 4 or 8) between the C terminus of the former and N terminus of the latter. The His-tagged recombinant proteins, expressed in BL21(DE3)pLysS cells and purified by immobilized metal affinity chromatography followed by gel filtration, were found to display a nanomolar efficacy in blocking BaL-pseudotyped HIV-1 infection of HOS.T4.R5 cells. This antiviral activity was HIV-1 specific, since it did not inhibit cell infection by vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) or amphotropic-murine leukemia virus. Importantly, the chimeric proteins were found to release intraviral p24 protein from both BaL-pseudotyped HIV-1 and fully infectious BaL HIV-1 in a dose-dependent manner in the absence of host cells. The addition of either MPER or CVN was found to outcompete this virolytic effect, indicating that both components of the chimera are required for virolysis. The finding that engaging the Env protein spike and membrane using a chimeric ligand can destabilize the virus and lead to inactivation opens up a means to investigate virus particle metastability and to evaluate this approach for inactivation at the earliest stages of exposure to virus and before host cell encounter. HIV-1 is a global health epidemic that leads to the deaths of over two million people annually through eventual progression into AIDS. Highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) (1) has proven effective at delaying the onset of AIDS in HIV-positive individuals but does not provide a cure for the infection itself. Despite decades of research, no vaccine-or microbicide-based approach for preventing transmission of HIV-1 to noninfected individuals is available. While the leading microbicidal candidate is based on tenofovir, a reverse transcriptase inhibitor (2), there are no reported examples of FDA-approved agents or combinations of agents that directly and specifically destroy mature HIV-1 particles before they gain entry into a target cell (3). Therefore, there is an opportunity to broaden the number of microbicidal candidates by rational design of agents that specifically prevent HIV-1 entry and irreversibly destroy infectious virus.A mature HIV-1 virion is an approximately 1-aL-sized (4) bilayer-enveloped packet of cytoplasm stolen from the cell from which the virion budded, surrounding the RNA-containing nucleocapsid. HIV-1 enters target cells via interactions between the viral envelope protein spike, Env, with the surface-expressed CD4 receptor and a chemokine coreceptor (CCR5 or CXCR4) (5, 6). The Env spike is a metastable heterotrimeric protein complex of three transmembrane gp41...

The membrane spanning domain (MSD) of human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV-1) envelope glycoprotein gp41 is important for fusion and infection. We used molecular dynamics (MD) simulations (3.4 μs total) to relate membrane and peptide properties that lead to water solvation of the α-helical gp41 MSD’s midspan arginine in pure dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC) and in 50/50 DPPC/cholesterol membranes. We find that the midspan arginine is solvated by water that penetrates the inner leaflet, leading to a so-called water defect. The water defect is surprisingly robust across initial conditions and membrane compositions, but the presence of cholesterol modulates its behavior in several key ways. In the cholesterol-containing membranes, fluctuations in membrane thickness and water penetration depth are localized near the midspan arginine, and the MSD helices display a tightly regulated tilt angle. In the cholesterol-free membranes, thickness fluctuations are not as strongly correlated to the peptide position and tilt angles vary significantly depending on protein position relative to boundaries between domains of differing thickness. Cholesterol in an HIV-1 viral membrane is required for infection. Therefore, this work suggests that the colocalized water defect and membrane thickness fluctuations in cholesterol-containing viral membranes play an important role in fusion by bringing the membrane closer to a stability limit that must be crossed for fusion to occur.

Extensive all-atom molecular dynamics (∼24 μs total) allowed exploration of configurational space and calculation of lateral diffusion coefficients of the components of a protein-embedded, cholesterol-containing model bilayer. The three model membranes are composed of an ∼50/50 (by mole) dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC)/cholesterol bilayer and contained an α-helical transmembrane protein (HIV-1 gp41 TM). Despite the high concentration of cholesterol, normal Brownian motion was observed and the calculated diffusion coefficients (on the order of 10–9 cm2/s) are consistent with experiments. Diffusion is sensitive to a variety of parameters, and a temperature difference of ∼4 K from thermostat artifacts resulted in 2–10-fold differences in diffusion coefficients and significant differences in lipid order, membrane thickness, and unit cell area. Also, the specific peptide sequence likely underlies the consistently observed faster diffusion in one leaflet. Although the simulations here present molecular dynamics (MD) an order of magnitude longer than those from previous studies, the three systems did not approach ergodicity. The distributions of cholesterol and DPPC around the peptides changed on the microsecond time scale, but not significantly enough to thoroughly explore configurational space. These simulations support conclusions of other recent microsecond MD in that even longer time scales are needed for equilibration of model membranes and simulations of more realistic cellular or viral bilayers.

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