The requirement for proteasome activity in class I major histocompatibility complex antigen presentation is dictated by the length of preprocessed antigen

Accumulating evidence has implicated the proteasome in the processing of proteins along the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I presentation pathway. The availability of potent proteasome inhibitors provides an opportunity to examine the role of proteasome function in antigen presentation by MHC class I molecules to CD8(+) cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs). We have investigated the processing and presentation of antigenic epitopes from influenza hemagglutinin in target cells treated with the inhibitor of proteasome activity MG132. In the absence of proteasome activity, the processing and presentation of the full-length hemagglutinin was abolished, suggesting the requirement for proteasome function in the processing and presentation of the hemagglutinin glycoprotein. Epitope-containing translation products as short as 21 amino acids when expressed in target cells required proteasome activity for processing and presentation of the hemagglutinin epitope to CTLs. However, when endogenous peptides of 17 amino acids or shorter were expressed in target cells, the processing and presentation of epitopes contained in these peptides were insensitive to the proteasome inhibitor. Our results support the hypothesis that proteasome activity is required for the generation of peptides presented by MHC class I molecules and that the requirement for proteasome activity is dependent on the size of the translation product expressed in the target cell. The implications of these findings are discussed.