Rhesus cytomegalovirus (RhCMV) contains two open reading frames (Rh111 and Rh112) that encode proteins homologous to the phosphoprotein 65 (pp65) of the human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) UL83 gene. As HCMV pp65 elicits protective immune responses in infected humans and represents an important vaccination target, one RhCMV homologue of HCMV pp65, pp65-2 (Rh112), was characterized and analysed for its...

BACKGROUND Cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) appear to play an important role in the control and prevention of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) infection. The pp65 antigen is a structural protein, which has been defined as a potential target for effective immunity against HCMV infection. Incorporation of an 11 amino acid region of the HIV TAT protein transduction domain (Tat) into protein facilitates ...

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) pp65 protein is the major constituent of viral dense bodies but is dispensable for viral growth in vitro. pp65 copurifies with a S/T kinase activity and has been implicated in phosphorylation of HCMV IE1 immediate-early protein and its escape from major histocompatibility complex 1 presentation. Furthermore, the presence of pp65 correlates with a virion-associated k...

The tegument protein pp65 of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) represents the major component of mature virus particles. Nevertheless, deletion of pp65 has been shown to have no effects on virus replication and morphogenesis in fibroblasts in vitro. We have studied the HCMV virion composition in the absence of pp65 and viral growth of a pp65 stop mutant in different cell types, including monocyte-de...

Immunodominance hierarchies operating in immune responses to viral Ags limit the diversity of the elicited CD8 T cell responses. We evaluated in I-A(b+)/A2-HHD-II and HLA-DR1(+)/A2-DR1 mice the HLA-A*0201-restricted, multispecific CD8 T cell responses to the human CMV tegument phosphoprotein pp65 (pp65) Ag. Vaccination of mice with pp65-encoding DNA elicited high IFN-γ(+) CD8 T cell frequencies...

The gene encoding the 65K tegument phosphoprotein (pp65) of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) was cloned into pAc373 to construct a recombinant baculovirus (Acpp65-3) expressing pp65 in insect Sf9 cells. A baculovirus that carried a fragment of the gene, corresponding to the first 442 amino acids of pp65, was also developed, using vector pVL941 (Acpp65-2). Recombinant proteins migrating in SDS-polya...