HIV-1 Gag mutants can dominantly interfere with the replication of the wild-type virus.
The products of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) gag gene exist in a highly multimerized state in the mature virion. For that reason, they may represent a particularly suitable target for the generation of dominant negative mutants. A number of HIV site-directed Gag mutants did show interference with the production of infectious viral particles from cells in which they were cotransfected with a wild-type proviral DNA. Furthermore, cells constitutively expressing such HIV Gag mutants had an impaired ability to support HIV replication when infected with wild-type virus. The block was localized to the late stages of the virus life cycle. Such Gag variants could constitute prototypes for the development of anti-HIV intracellular immunization.
Trono
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Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142.
Feinberg
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Baltimore
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D000818:Animals; D002460:Cell Line; D002522:Chlorocebus aethiops; D003673:Defective Viruses / Q000235:genetics* / Q000502:physiology; D015750:Genes, gag; D015757:Genes, rev; D015497:HIV-1 / Q000235:genetics* / Q000502:physiology; D051379:Mice; D009154:Mutation; D010641:Phenotype; D014162:Transfection; D014779:Virus Replication