Human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1) is a complex retrovirus associated with the lymphoproliferative disease adult Tcell leukemia/lymphoma (ATL) and the neurodegenerative disorder tropical spastic paraparesis/HTLV-1-associated myelopathy (TSP/HAM). Replication of HTLV-1 is under the control of two major trans-acting proteins, Tax and Rex. Previous studies suggested that Tax activates transcription from the viral long terminal repeat (LTR) through recruitment of cellular CREB and transcriptional coactivators. Other studies reported that Rex acts posttranscriptionally and allows the cytoplasmic export of unspliced or incompletely spliced viral mRNAs carrying gag/pol and env only. As opposed to HIV's Rev-responsive element (RRE), the Rex-responsive element (RxRE) is present in all viral mRNAs in HTLV-1. However, based on indirect observations, it is believed that nuclear export and expression of the doubly spliced tax/rex RNA are Rex independent. In this study, we demonstrate that Rex does stimulate Tax expression, through nuclear-cytoplasmic export of the tax/rex RNA, even though a Rex-independent basal export mechanism exists. This effect was dependent upon the RxRE element and the RNA-binding activity of Rex. In addition, Rex-mediated export of tax/rex RNA was CRM1 dependent and inhibited by leptomycin B treatment.
Like all other retroviruses, human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1) has limited genetic information restricted by the small size of its genome. To overcome its small genome while reducing its dependency on the host cell machinery, HTLV-1 has evolved many strategies, including ribosome frameshifts, overlapping reading frames, complex alternative splicing patterns, reverse-sense RNA transcripts, and posttranslational processing/ modifications of viral proteins which ascribe distinct functions to them. Early observations of the existence of three major viral RNAs expressed in HTLV-1-infected cells, i.e., gag/pol, env, and tax/rex RNAs, led to the hypothesis that Rex positively regulates gag/pol and env RNAs while concomitantly reducing the abundance of the tax/rex RNA (25). Hence, HTLV-1 replication has been thought to be regulated by Tax and Rex proteins (14,27), though evidence suggests that additional viral proteins may also play an important role during the virus replication cycle (5, 32).Tax interaction with CREB family members and coactivators (CBP, P300, and PCAF) results in a high-molecular-weight complex with high affinity for binding to and transactivating the viral long terminal repeat (LTR) (15,23,26,30). Rex has at least three domains that are important for its functions: an arginine-rich region important for binding to the Rex-responsive element (RxRE) (8); a region required for multimerization of Rex, a step required for assembly onto the RxRE (6, 9); and a leucine-rich nuclear export signal that interacts with the nuclear export receptor, CRM1 (17,19). The ability of Rex to regulate expression of the gag and env structural genes posttranscriptionally is rigorously dependent o...