Nakayama-Hosoya K, Ishida T, Youngblood B, Nakamura H, Hosoya N, Koga M, Koibuchi T, Iwamoto A, Kawana-Tachikawa A. Epigenetic repression of interleukin 2 expression in senescent CD4+ T cells during chronic HIV type 1 infection.
J Infect Dis 2014;
211:28-39. [PMID:
25001463 DOI:
10.1093/infdis/jiu376]
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Abstract
The molecular mechanisms for IL2 gene-specific dysregulation during chronic human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infection are unknown. Here, we investigated the role of DNA methylation in suppressing interleukin 2 (IL-2) expression in memory CD4(+) T cells during chronic HIV-1 infection. We observed that CpG sites in the IL2 promoter of CD4(+) T cells were fully methylated in naive CD4(+) T cells and significantly demethylated in the memory populations. Interestingly, we found that the memory cells that had a terminally differentiated phenotype and expressed CD57 had increased IL2 promoter methylation relative to less differentiated memory cells in healthy individuals. Importantly, early effector memory subsets from HIV-1-infected subjects expressed high levels of CD57 and were highly methylated at the IL2 locus. Furthermore, the increased CD57 expression on memory CD4(+) T cells was inversely correlated with IL-2 production. These data suggest that DNA methylation at the IL2 locus in CD4(+) T cells is coupled to immunosenescence and plays a critical role in the broad dysfunction that occurs in polyclonal T cells during HIV-1 infection.
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