The aim behind this experiment was to check whether rhesus monkey cells are more effective against the HSV-1 and HSV-2 replication than Human TRIM5. Rhesus Macaque fibroblast cell lines and HeLa cell lines were infected with HSV-1 KOS and HSV-2 186 syn+ strains at MOI=3 PFU/cell and harvested at different time points post infection. The viral load at these time points are shown the Figure 1.
From the figure we understand that the viral yield from the rhesus monkey cells is almost 100 fold less than the viral yield obtained from the HeLa cells proving that the viral replication is inhibited in the rhesus monkeys. Hence, rhesus monkey fibroblasts were less permissive to HSV infection than HeLa Cells. These results made the scientist ponder whether rhesus monkey TRIM5 has a role to play in the viral yield inhibition.
Rhesus TRIM5α protein restricts …show more content…
The effect of the different species TRIM5α was tested on the HeLa cells expressing rhesus monkey (H-R), human (H-H), African green monkey (H-AGM) and squirrel monkey (H-Sq) TRIM5α protein along with H-L cell line having empty vector. The cells were infected HSV-2 186 syn+ strain at an MOI of 3 PFU/cell and harvested after 24h.
Rhesus monkey TRIM5α was shown to inhibit HSV replication by 4.5 folds as compared to H-L cells while 3.6 folds in African green monkey. There was no significant decrease in viral yield in the cells expressing human and squirrel TRIM5α concluding that old world monkeys (OWN) TRIM5α is more effective in inhibiting HSV replication. This also suggest that TRIM5α effect is species specific that means the protein produced by only certain species i.e Old World Monkeys is effective against HSV replication (Figure 3).
Effects of rhesus TRIM5α protein on HSV-1 and HSV-2 protein