Nature Communications (Apr 2021)

A slowly cleaved viral signal peptide acts as a protein-integral immune evasion domain

  • Einat Seidel,
  • Liat Dassa,
  • Shira Kahlon,
  • Boaz Tirosh,
  • Anne Halenius,
  • Tal Seidel Malkinson,
  • Ofer Mandelboim

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21983-x
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 1
pp. 1 – 19

Abstract

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Glycoprotein US9 of human cytomegalovirus downregulates the activating immune ligand MICA*008 to avoid NK cell activation. Here, Seidel et al. show that the signal peptide of US9 is cleaved unusually slowly, causing MICA*008 to be retained in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and degraded via the ER quality control system.