Cytotoxic T lymphocytes do not appear to select for mutations in an immunodominant epitope of simian immunodeficiency virus gag.
Studies to date assessing HIV escape from CTL in vivo have yielded conflicting results. Previous studies have demonstrated that simian immunodeficiency virus of macaques (SIVmac)-infected rhesus monkeys expressing the MHC class I allele Mamu-A*01 reproducibly develop a gag-specific CTL response limited to a 9-amino acid epitope of the SIVmac gag protein (residues 182-190 within peptide 11C). To determine whether CTL have a role in selecting for AIDS virus mutants, we examined mutations in SIVmac proviral DNA encoding this gag CTL epitope in PBL of infected rhesus monkeys. Three Mamu-A*01+ rhesus monkeys were infected with SIVmac and assessed for gag- and peptide 11C-specific CTL responses. This specific CTL response was maintained in two monkeys, but lost in the third animal 2 yr after infection. The generation of proviral gag mutations was then determined by sequencing 500-bp proviral fragments amplified from fresh PBL obtained from the monkeys more than 2.5 yr after infection. Although numerous point mutations were characterized in 131 polymerase chain reaction-generated clones of SIVmac gag, only four mutations within the gag CTL epitope-coding region of the genome were identified. Comparison of synonymous and nonsynonymous nucleotide substitutions in the regions encoding peptide 11C (p11C) and the flanking gag protein indicated a lack of selective pressure for viral mutations in the CTL epitope coding region. Interestingly, a predominant gag mutant encoding a single amino acid change in p11C was found in a monkey which lost its CTL activity. However, even in this setting there was no evidence for selection of mutations in the CTL epitope coding region when compared with the flanking region. Furthermore, synthetic peptides corresponding to all naturally occurring variants in the gag epitope-coding region were recognized by cloned and bulk cultured effector cells of the infected monkeys with persistent CTL. These results indicate that SIVmac gag- and p11C-specific CTL do not select for mutations in the immunodominant epitope-coding region and that the naturally occurring mutants do not appear to escape CTL recognition.