Journal
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL MEDICINE
Volume 213, Issue 12, Pages 2539-2552Publisher
ROCKEFELLER UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1084/jem.20160437
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Funding
- National Institutes of Health [AI108765, AI060389, AI40035, CA176130]
- Agency for Science, Technology, and Research (A*STAR), Singapore
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Interferon (IFN) lambdas are critical antiviral effectors in hepatic and mucosal infections. Although IFN lambda 1, IFN lambda 2, and IFN lambda 3 act antiviral, genetic association studies have shown that expression of the recently discovered IFNL4 is detrimental to hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection through a yet unknown mechanism. Intriguingly, human IFNL4 harbors a genetic variant that introduces a premature stop codon. We performed a molecular and biochemical characterization of IFN lambda 4 to determine its role and regulation of expression. We found that IFN lambda 4 exhibits similar antiviral activity to IFN lambda 3 without negatively affecting antiviral IFN activity or cell survival. We show that humans deploy several mechanisms to limit expression of functional IFN lambda 4 through noncoding splice variants and nonfunctional protein isoforms. Furthermore, protein-coding IFNL4 mRNA are not loaded onto polyribosomes and lack a strong polyadenylation signal, resulting in poor translation efficiency. This study provides mechanistic evidence that humans suppress IFN lambda 4 expression, suggesting that immune function is dependent on other IFNL family members.
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