Biologic studies of chimeras of highly and moderately virulent molecular clones of simian immunodeficiency virus SIVsmPBj suggest a critical role for envelope in acute AIDS virus pathogenesis.

Previous studies identified three molecular clones of the acutely pathogenic SIVsmPBj strain that varied in terms of relative in vivo pathogenicity. One clone, SIVsmPBj6.6, reproducibly induced a rapidly fatal disease in pigtailed macaques. In contrast, a highly related clone (SIVsmPBj6.9) was only minimally pathogenic in macaques. PBj6.6 and PBj6.9 shared a tyrosine substitution at position 17 in the Nef protein that is a major determinant of virulence but differed at one residue in Vpx (C89R), three residues within the envelope (D119G, R871G, G872R), and a single residue in Nef (F252L). SIVsmPBj6.9 was less efficient in inducing proliferation of resting macaque peripheral blood mononuclear cells in vitro than SIVsmPBj6.6 and exhibited a marked reduction in infectivity relative to SIVsmPBj6.6. Chimeric viruses for each of these variable residues were constructed, and their biologic properties were compared to those of the parental strains. Differences in Vpx and Nef did not alter the basic biologic phenotype of the chimeras. However, the D119G substitution in the envelope of SIVsmPBj6.9 was associated with a marked reduction in the infectivity of this virus relative to SIVsmPBj6.6. An associated processing defect in gp160 of SIVsmPBj6.9 and chimeras expressing the D119G substitution suggests that a reduction in virion envelope incorporation is the mechanistic basis for reduced virion infectivity. In vivo studies revealed that substitution of the PBj6.9 amino acid into PBj6.6 (D119) abrogated the pathogenicity of this previously pathogenic virus. Introduction of the PBj6.9 G119, however, did not confer full virulence to the parental PBj6.9 virus, implicating one or all of the other four substitutions in the virulence of SIVsmPBj6.6.