The suppression of innate immune response by human rhinovirus C
Introduction
Human rhinovirus (RV), belonging to the genus Enterovirus in the family Picornaviridae, is the most frequent etiological agent of the common cold in humans [1]. Recent studies have shown that rhinovirus infection is also a major source of asthma exacerbation and lower respiratory tract illness [2]. In addition to RV-A and RV-B, RV-C strains were recently discovered using molecular techniques [3]. Clinical data suggest that RV-C strains are more virulent than RV-A and RV-B strains [4], [5], [6]. RV-A and RV-C cause more severe illness in infancy than RV-B [4]. RV-C is present in the majority of children with acute asthma and is associated with more severe asthma than other species [7], [8], [9].
The pathogenic mechanisms of asthma exacerbation caused by RV remain unclear. A cytokine imbalance with a deficient Th1 response to rhinovirus is associated with degrees of asthma severity, suggesting that impaired antiviral responses may be associated [10]. The interferon (IFN) response plays an important role in virus-associated respiratory disease. One abnormal feature of the asthma induced by rhinovirus is the impaired expression of IFNs [11], [12], [13]. RV-C can be grown in the organ cultures of human sinus epithelium and human airway epithelial cells that are differentiated at the air-liquid interface (ALI), but to date, it has not been propagated in immortalized cell lines [14], [15]. The IFN responses to RV-C infection remain largely unknown.
Virus infection activates the innate immune system, which recognizes viral components through pattern-recognition receptors (PRRs). PRRs that sense RNA virus infections include Toll-like receptors (TLRs) and the cytoplasmic RNA helicases RIG-I-like receptors (RLRs), such as retinoid acid-inducible gene I (RIG-I) and melanoma differentiation-associated gene 5 (MDA5). After transmission of serial signals, IFNs and cytokines are produced in response to viral infection. Studies on RV-A have indicated roles for TLR3, RIG-I, and MDA5 in the induction of IFNs following RV infection [16], [17], [18]. Many picornaviruses attenuate the production of IFN-β to evade innate immune responses. Reports have suggested that mitochondrial antiviral signaling protein (MAVS, also known as IPS-1, VISA, or Cardif) is cleaved during HRV1a infection [19]. The mechanisms of innate immune evasion by rhinovirus (particularly RV-C) have not been investigated comprehensively.
Section snippets
Viruses and cells
LZ651 is a clinical RV-C sample (GenBank: JF317016.1). Sendai virus was a gift from Professor Li-shu Zheng (China CDC, Beijing, China). Bronchial tissue was obtained from Nanjing Children's Hospital (Nanjing, China). The protocol was approved by the Ethical Committee of the National Institute for Viral Disease Prevention and Control (China CDC) and Nanjing Children's Hospital. The use of patient specimens in this study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the National Institute for Viral
RV-C infection does not induce a robust IFN-β response in human differentiated bronchial epithelial cells
To explore the IFN responses to RV-C, we developed differentiated primary HBE cells at the ALI with a pseudostratified morphology to infect and propagate RV-C (Supplementary Fig. 1). We constructed a full-length cDNA clone of LZ651 from a clinical RV-C sample (Supplementary Fig. 2). After transcription in vitro, the full-length genome of LZ651 was transfected into HeLa cells and the differentiated HBE cells were infected with the LZ651 virus. As shown in Fig. 1A, following inoculation with
Discussion
Previous studies have reported distinct IFN responses against rhinoviruses. Rhinovirus RV13, RV20, and RV14 did not induce significant amounts of type I IFN in HeLa and A549 cells [11], [21]. Khaitov et al. [22] showed that RV1B and RV16 infected BEAS-2B cells and peripheral blood mononuclear cells, which resulted in induction interferon. To explore the interaction of RV-C and the innate immune pathways, we determined whether RV-C infection stimulated the expression of type I IFN in HBE cells
Conflict of interest
None.
Acknowledgments
We thank Prof. Yury A. Bochkov for assistance with HBE culture at ALI and Prof. Dong-yan Jin for assistance with experiments. This work was supported by Grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 81601813) and the China Mega-Project for Infectious Disease (Grant No. 2013ZX10004).
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