Elucidating the viral and host factors enabling the cross-species transmission of primate lentiviruses from simians to humans

Abstract

The HIV-1 epidemic originated from a cross-species transmission of a primate lentivirus from chimpanzees to humans near the turn of the 18th century. Simian immunodeficiency viruses have been jumping between old world monkeys in West/Central Africa for thousands of years. So why did HIV-1 only emerge in the past century? This study examined the replicative fitness, transmission, restriction, and cytopathogenicity of 26 primate lentiviruses. Pairwise competitions of these primate lentiviruses revealed that SIVcpz had the highest replicative fitness in human or chimpanzee peripheral blood mononuclear cells, even higher fitness than HIV-1 group M strains responsible for 37 million infections worldwide. In contrast the "HIV-2 lineage" (SIVsmm, SIVmac, SIVagm, and HIV-2) had the lowest replicative fitness. SIVcpz strains were less inhibited by human restriction factors than the "HIV-2 lineage" strains, a restriction that was inversely correlated with replicative fitness. SIVcpz from the chimpanzee subspecies Pan troglodytes troglodytes (Ptt) was slightly more fit in human cells than the strains from Pt schweinfurthii (Pts). However, unlike all other primate lentiviruses (including the HIV-2 lineage), SIVcpz was nonpathogenic in human tonsillar tissue and did not deplete CD4+ T-cells, consistent with the slow or nonpathogenic disease observed in chimpanzees. Despite the close phylogenetic relationship between SIVcpz_Ptt and HIV-1, this epidemic was either caused by cross species transmission of a rare, undiscovered SIVcpz strain of higher virulence or higher virulence differentially evolved among HIV-1 subtypes during the human epidemic. Author summaryInvasion of wild animal habitats by humans can have devastating consequences for the human population as evident by the HIV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 epidemics. With SARS-CoV-2, a recent zoonotic jump, likely from bats, will help to identify a coronavirus progenitor. In contrast, simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) jumped into humans over 100 years ago from a possibly extinct sub-species of chimpanzees and/or extinct lineage of SIV. We examined replicative fitness and pathogenesis of 26 different primate lentiviruses in human and chimpanzee primary lymphoid cells from blood and within tonsils. SIV from a specific chimpanzee species and lowland gorillas were the most capable of infecting and replicating in human and chimp lymphoid cells but they did not result in the pathogenesis related to disease in humans. In contrast, SIV from other old world monkeys were pathogenic but could not replicate efficiently in human cells. We propose the main HIV-1 is derived from a distinct jump of a very rare SIV strain in chimps leading to AIDS pandemic.