Bovine ephemeral fever virus triggers autophagy enhancing virus replication via upregulation of the Src/JNK/AP1 and PI3K/Akt/NF-κB pathways and suppression of the PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway.

Autophagy plays an important role in cellular response to pathogens. However, the impact of the autophagy machinery on bovine ephemeral fever virus (BEFV) infection is not yet determined. A recent study in our laboratory demonstrated that BEFV triggers simultaneously the PI3K/Akt/NF-κB and Src/JNK-AP1 pathways in the stage of virus binding to enhance virus entry. In this work, we report that BEFV induces autophagy via upregulation of the PI3K/Akt/NF-κB and Src/JNK/AP1 pathways in the early to middle stages of infection and suppresses the PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway at the late stage of infection. To activate NF-κB, BEFV promotes degradation of IκBα and activates Akt to stimulate NF-κB translocation into the nucleus. Immunoprecipitation assays revealed that BEFV disrupts Beclin 1 and Bcl-2 interaction by JNK-mediated Bcl-2 phosphorylation, thereby activating autophagy. Overexpression of Bcl-2 reversed the BEFV-induced increase in the LC3 II levels. Suppression of autophagy either by knockdown of autophagy-related genes with shRNAs or treatment with a pharmacological inhibitor 3-MA reduced BEFV replication, suggesting that BEFV-induced autophagy benefits virus replication. Our results revealed that the BEFV M protein is one of the viral proteins involved in inducing autophagy via suppression of the PI3K/Akt/mTORC1 pathway. Furthermore, degradation of p62 was observed by immunoblotting, suggesting that BEFV infection triggers a complete autophagic response. Disruption of autophagosome-lysosome fusion by depleting LAMP2 resulted in reduction of virus yield, suggesting that formation of autolysosome benefits virus production.