Contributions of the viral genetic background and a single amino acid substitution in an immunodominant CD8+ T-cell epitope to murine coronavirus neurovirulence.

The immunodominant CD8+ T-cell epitope of a highly neurovirulent strain of mouse hepatitis virus (MHV), JHM, is thought to be essential for protection against virus persistence within the central nervous system. To test whether abrogation of this H-2Db-restricted epitope, located within the spike glycoprotein at residues S510 to 518 (S510), resulted in delayed virus clearance and/or virus persistence we selected isogenic recombinants which express either the wild-type JHM spike protein (RJHM) or spike containing the N514S mutation (RJHM(N514S)), which abrogates the response to S510. In contrast to observations in suckling mice in which viruses encoding inactivating mutations within the S510 epitope (epitope escape mutants) were associated with persistent virus and increased neurovirulence (Pewe et al., J Virol. 72:5912-5918, 1998), RJHM(N514S) was not more virulent than the parental, RJHM, in 4-week-old C57BL/6 (H-2b) mice after intracranial injection. Recombinant viruses expressing the JHM spike, wild type or encoding the N514S substitution, were also selected in which background genes were derived from the neuroattenuated A59 strain of MHV. Whereas recombinants expressing the wild-type JHM spike (SJHM/RA59) were highly neurovirulent, A59 recombinants containing the N514S mutation (SJHM(N514S)/RA59) were attenuated, replicated less efficiently, and exhibited reduced virus spread in the brain at 5 days postinfection (peak of infectious virus titers in the central nervous system) compared to parental virus encoding wild-type spike. Virulence assays in BALB/c mice (H-2d), which do not recognize the S510 epitope, revealed that attenuation of the epitope escape mutants was not due to the loss of a pathogenic immune response directed against the S510 epitope. Thus, an intact immunodominant S510 epitope is not essential for virus clearance from the CNS, the S510 inactivating mutation results in decreased virulence in weanling mice but not in suckling mice, suggesting that specific host conditions are required for epitope escape mutants to display increased virulence, and the N514S mutation causes increased attenuation in the context of A59 background genes, demonstrating that genes other than that for the spike are also important in determining neurovirulence.