Editing of the Human TRIM5 Gene to Introduce Mutations with the Potential to Inhibit HIV-1

Abstract

The type I interferon (IFN-I)-inducible human restriction factor TRIM5 inhibits the infection of human cells by specific nonhuman retroviruses, such as N-MLV and EIAV, but does not generally target HIV-1. However, the introduction of two aminoacid substitutions, R332G and R355G, in the human TRIM5 (huTRIM5) domain responsible for retroviral capsid recognition leads to efficient HIV-1 restriction. Using a DNA transfection-based CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing protocol, we successfully mutated TRIM5 to its HIV-1-restrictive version by homology-directed repair (HDR) in HEK293T cells. Nine clones bearing at least one HDR-edited TRIM5 allele containing both mutations were isolated (5.6% overall efficiency), whereas another one contained only the R332G mutation. Of concern, several of these HDR-edited clones contained on-target undesired mutations, and none had all the alleles corrected. We observed a lack of HIV-1 restriction in the cell clones generated, even when cells were stimulated with IFN-I prior to infection. This, however, was partly explained by the unexpectedly low potential for TRIM5-mediated restriction activity in this cell line. Our study demonstrates the feasibility of editing the TRIM5 gene to in human cells and identifies the main challenges to be addressed in order to use this approach to confer protection from HIV-1.