The latency-associated UL138 gene product of human cytomegalovirus sensitizes cells to tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha) signaling by upregulating TNF-alpha receptor 1 cell surface expression.

Many viruses antagonize tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) signaling in order to counteract its antiviral properties. One way viruses achieve this goal is to reduce TNF-α receptor 1 (TNFR1) on the surface of infected cells. Such a mechanism is also employed by human cytomegalovirus (HCMV), as recently reported by others and us. On the other hand, TNF-α has also been shown to foster reactivation of HCMV from latency. By characterizing a new variant of HCMV AD169, we show here that TNFR1 downregulation by HCMV only becomes apparent upon infection of cells with HCMV strains lacking the so-called ULb' region. This region contains genes involved in regulating viral immune escape, cell tropism, or latency and is typically lost from laboratory strains but present in low-passage strains and clinical isolates. We further show that although ULb'-positive viruses also contain the TNFR1-antagonizing function, this activity is masked by a dominant TNFR1 upregulation mediated by the ULb' gene product UL138. Isolated expression of UL138 in the absence of viral infection upregulates TNFR1 surface expression and can rescue both TNFR1 reexpression and TNF-α responsiveness of cells infected with an HCMV mutant lacking the UL138-containing transcription unit. Given that the UL138 gene product is one of the few genes recognized to be expressed during HCMV latency and the known positive effects of TNF-α on viral reactivation, we suggest that via upregulating TNFR1 surface expression UL138 may sensitize latently infected cells to TNF-α-mediated reactivation of HCMV.