The tick-transmitted orthomyxovirus Thogoto virus (THOV) encodes the ML protein acting as a viral suppressor of the host interferon (IFN) system. Here, we describe that type I IFN is strongly induced in primary mouse embryo fibroblasts as well as plasmacytoid dendritic cells upon infection with a THOV mutant lacking the ML gene. However, wild-type THOV encoding ML suppresses induction of IFN by preventing the activation of members of the IFN regulatory factor (IRF) family. We found that reporter gene expression dependent on IRF3 and IRF7 was strongly inhibited by ML. Further experiments revealed that ML interacts with IRF7 and prevents dimerization of the transcription factor and its association with the coactivator TRAF6. Interestingly, another IRF7 activation step, nuclear translocation, is not affected by ML. Our data elucidate ML protein as a virulence factor with an IRF-specific IFN-antagonistic spectrum.
INTRODUCTIONThogoto virus (THOV) is a tick-transmitted orthomyxovirus with a genome consisting of six single-stranded RNA segments that encode seven structural proteins (Hagmaier et al., 2004;Nuttall et al., 1995;van Regenmortel et al., 2000). THOV is highly sensitive to the action of type I interferons (IFN), mostly mediated by the IFN-induced antiviral Mx proteins Kochs & Haller, 1999;Pavlovic et al., 1995). In order to avoid the antiviral effects of IFN, THOV developed a strategy to suppress the induction of the IFN system. We have previously shown that the ML protein, an extended version of the viral matrix (M) protein, is a viral IFN antagonist (Hagmaier et al., 2003(Hagmaier et al., , 2004. Previous work with a recombinant THOV lacking ML expression showed that ML is essential for virus growth and pathogenesis in an IFN-competent host (Pichlmair et al., 2004). Further studies demonstrated that in the presence of ML the activation and/or action of the interferon regulatory factor-3 (IRF3) is severely affected (Jennings et al., 2005). This effect depends on direct interaction of ML with the transcription factor IIB (TFIIB) (Vogt et al., 2008), suggesting that complex formation of ML with TFIIB specifically disturbs the function of certain transcription coactivators such as IRF3.Members of the IRF family of transcription factors are involved in all aspects of IFN induction and action (Haller et al., 2006;Mamane et al., 1999;Randall & Goodbourn, 2008;Taniguchi & Takaoka, 2002). IRF3 is constitutively expressed in most cells and is essential for the induction of IFN-b as an early response to virus infection (Lin et al., 1998; Yoneyama et al., 1998) or to Toll-like receptor (TLR) agonists like dsRNA or lipopolysaccharide that bind to TLR3 and TLR4, respectively (Pitha, 2004). A positive feedback loop then leads to the induction of IRF7, which upon activation by virus infection leads to the amplification of the IFN signal mainly by transcriptional activation of the IFN-a genes in addition to IFN-b (Marie et al., 1998;Sato et al., 1998).Two independent signal transduction pathways lead to the activation of ...