Role of Intracellular Distribution of Feline and Bovine SAMHD1 Proteins in Lentiviral Restriction

Human SAMHD1 (h SAM) restricts lentiviruses at the reverse transcription step through its d NTP triphosphohydrolase(d NTPase) activity.Besides humans,several mammalian species such as cats and cows that carry their own lentiviruses also express SAMHD1.However,the intracellular distribution of feline and bovine SAMHD1 (f SAM and b SAM) and its significance in their lentiviral restriction function is not known.Here,we demonstrated that f SAM and b SAM were both predominantly localized to the nucleus and nuclear localization signal (11KRPR14)-deleted f SAM and b SAM relocalized to the cytoplasm.Both cytoplasmic f SAM and b SAM retained the antiviral function against different lentiviruses and cytoplasmic f SAM could restrict Vpx-encoding SIV and HIV-2 more efficiently than its wild-type (WT) protein as cytoplasmic h SAM.Further investigation revealed that cytoplasmic f SAM was resistant to Vpx-induced degradation like cytoplasmic h SAM,while cytoplasmic b SAM was not,but they all demonstrated the same in vitro d NTPase activity and all could interact with Vpx as their WT proteins,indicating that cytoplasmic h SAM and f SAM can suppress more SIV and HIV-2 by being less sensitive to Vpx-mediated degradation.Our results suggested that f SAM-and b SAM-mediated lentiviral restriction does not require their nuclear localization and that f SAM shares more common features with h SAM.These findings may provide insights for the establishment of alternative animal models to study SAMHD1 in vivo.