HIV-1 adaptation to NK cell mediated immune pressure

Natural Killer (NK) cells play an important role in the control of viral infections, recognizing virally infected cells through a variety of activating and inhibitory receptors(1–3). Epidemiological and functional studies have recently suggested that NK cells can also contribute to the control of HIV-1 infection through recognition of virally infected cells by both activating and inhibitory Killer Immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIRs)(4–7). However, it remains unknown whether NK cells can directly mediate antiviral immune pressure in vivo in humans. Here we describe KIR-associated amino acid polymorphisms in the HIV-1 sequence of chronically infected individuals on a population level. We show that these KIR-associated HIV-1 sequence polymorphisms can enhance the binding of inhibitory KIRs to HIV-1-infected CD4+ T cells, leading to reduced antiviral activity of KIR+ NK cells. These data demonstrate that KIR+ NK cells can place immunological pressure on HIV-1, and that the virus can evade such NK cell mediated immune pressure by selecting for sequence polymorphisms, as previously described for virus-specific T cells and neutralizing antibodies(8). NK cells might therefore play a previously underappreciated role in contributing to viral evolution.