Inhibition of HIV-1 replication by 5'LTR decoy RNA.
Long terminal repeats (5'-LTR) contain essential enhancer and promoter elements that act as targets for cellular and viral regulatory proteins. The interplay of these cis-acting sequences with specific transcription factors (NF kappa B, Ap1, and Sp1) present in infected cells determines the rate of transcription initiation from the 5'-LTR promoter element, and thus strongly influences the level of viral replication. Furthermore, Tat functions to enhance transcriptional elongation by binding to the trans-activation response element (TAR). These transcriptional factors enhance the transcriptional elongation from the HIV-1 promoter. HIV-1 genomic RNA packaging is a highly specific process involving interactions between the viral Gag precursor and cis acting packaging signals in the 5' leader sequence of HIV-1 genomic RNA. We examined the suppression effect of HIV-1 expression by the decoy RNAs targeted to these HIV-1 transcriptional and packaging regulatory regions. HIV-1 expression was inhibited by the 5'-LTR decoy RNA, and measured by the amount of HIV-1 gag p24 protein, but no inhibition of HIV-1 packaging could be detected.
Nishitsuji
H
H
Department of Industrial Chemistry, Faculty of Engineering, Chiba Institute of Technology, 2-17-1 Tsudanuma Narashino, Chiba 275-0016, Japan.
Tamura
Y
Y
Fuse
T
T
Habu
Y
Y
Miyano-Kurosaki
N
N
Takaku
H
H
D000818:Animals; D019556:COS Cells; D005822:Genetic Vectors; D016655:HIV Core Protein p24 / Q000096:biosynthesis; D016325:HIV Long Terminal Repeat; D015497:HIV-1 / Q000235:genetics* / Q000502:physiology; D012313:RNA / Q000032:analysis / Q000235:genetics*; D014162:Transfection; D019065:Virus Assembly; D014779:Virus Replication
D016655:HIV Core Protein p24; D012313:RNA