Processing of vimentin occurs during the early stages of adenovirus infection.

Evidence is presented that a fraction of vimentin, a component of cytoskeleton recently found to be associated with intracytoplasmic, migrating adenovirus type 2 (Ad2), is processed into smaller polypeptides at early times after infection. The extent of vimentin cleavage appears to depend upon both the multiplicity of infection and the adenovirus serotype. Ad2, Ad5, Ad4, and Ad9 induced similar vimentin cleavage in infected cells, whereas Ad3, Ad7, and Ad12, for which most infecting particles are found sequestered within phagosomes, induced very little, if any, vimentin breakdown. This suggests that vimentin processing is in some way related to the number of virus particles migrating through the cytoplasm. Experiments performed in vitro and in vivo with adenovirus temperature-sensitive mutants H2 ts1 and H2 ts112 and UV-inactivated wild-type Ad2 indicated that vimentin processing is due to a nonvirion, cytoskeleton-associated, proteolytic enzyme activated by adenovirus and sharing characteristics with the protease described by Nelson and Traub (W.J. Nelson and P. Traub, J. Cell Sci. 57:25-49, 1982). The activity of this protease appears to be required for productive infection by adenovirus serotypes 2 and 5 (subgroup C), 4 (subgroup E), and 9 (subgroup D) but not by the oncogenic serotypes 3 and 7 (subgroup B) and 12 (subgroup A).