1. Altered HIV-1 mRNA Splicing Due to Drug-Resistance-Associated Mutations in Exon 2/2b
- Author
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Lisa Müller, Wiebke Moskorz, Anna-Lena Brillen, Frank Hillebrand, Philipp Niklas Ostermann, Niklas Kiel, Lara Walotka, Johannes Ptok, Jörg Timm, Nadine Lübke, and Heiner Schaal
- Subjects
splicing ,HIV-1 ,SREs ,Biology (General) ,QH301-705.5 ,Chemistry ,QD1-999 - Abstract
The underlying molecular mechanism and their general effect on the replication capacity of HIV 1 drug-resistance-associated mutations is often poorly understood. To elucidate the effect of two such mutations located in a region with a high density of spicing regulatory elements on the HIV-1-splicing outcome, bioinformatic predictions were combined with transfection and infection experiments. Results show that the previously described R263K drug-resistance-associated integrase mutation has additionally a severe effect on the ESE2b splicing regulatory element (SRE) in exon 2b, which causes loss of SD2b recognition. This was confirmed by an R263R silent mutation with a similar predicted effect on the exon 2b SRE. In contrast, a V260I mutation and its silent counterpart with a lower effect on ESS2b did not exhibit any differences in the splicing pattern. Since HIV-1 highly relies on a balanced splicing reaction, changes in the splicing outcome can contribute to changes in viral replication and might add to the effect of escape mutations toward antiviral drugs. Thus, a classification of mutations purely addressing proteins is insufficient.
- Published
- 2021
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