Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) emerged in November 2002 as a case of atypical pneumonia in China, and the causative agent of SARS was identified to be a novel coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV). Bone marrow stromal antigen 2 (BST-2; also known as CD317 or tetherin) was initially identified to be a pre-B-cell growth promoter, but it also inhibits the release of virions of the retrovirus human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) by tethering budding virions to the host cell membrane. Further work has shown that BST-2 restricts the release of many other viruses, including the human coronavirus 229E (hCoV-229E), and the genomes of many of these viruses encode BST-2 antagonists to overcome BST-2 restriction. Given the previous studies on BST-2, we aimed to determine if BST-2 has the ability to restrict SARS-CoV and if the SARS-CoV genome encodes any proteins that modulate BST-2's antiviral function. Through an in vitro screen, we identified four potential BST-2 modulators encoded by the SARS-CoV genome: the papain-like protease (PL Pro ), nonstructural protein 1 (nsp1), ORF6, and ORF7a. As the function of ORF7a in SARS-CoV replication was previously unknown, we focused our study on ORF7a. We found that BST-2 does restrict SARS-CoV, but the loss of ORF7a leads to a much greater restriction, confirming the role of ORF7a as an inhibitor of BST-2. We further characterized the mechanism of BST-2 inhibition by ORF7a and found that ORF7a localization changes when BST-2 is overexpressed and ORF7a binds directly to BST-2. Finally, we also show that SARSCoV ORF7a blocks the restriction activity of BST-2 by blocking the glycosylation of BST-2.
IMPORTANCEThe severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) emerged from zoonotic sources in 2002 and caused over 8,000 infections and 800 deaths in 37 countries around the world. Identifying host factors that regulate SARS-CoV pathogenesis is critical to understanding how this lethal virus causes disease. We have found that BST-2 is capable of restricting SARS-CoV release from cells; however, we also identified a SARS-CoV protein that inhibits BST-2 function. We show that the SARS-CoV protein ORF7a inhibits BST-2 glycosylation, leading to a loss of BST-2's antiviral function.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) was identified to be the causative agent of a 2002 to 2004 outbreak of severe respiratory disease that emerged from the Guangdong province of China, resulting in 8,096 cases and 774 deaths across 37 countries (1, 2). SARS-CoV is an enveloped virus with a positive-sense, single-stranded RNA genome of roughly 30,000 nucleotides encoding four structural proteins: the spike (S), envelope (E), membrane (M), and nucleocapsid (N) proteins (3). N protein forms the nucleocapsid, while E and M are minor virion membrane proteins. SARS-CoV entry into the cell is mediated by S-protein binding to angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) on the cell surface (4). In addition to the structural proteins, the SARS-C...