scholarly journals Low recombination activity of R region located at both ends of the HIV-1 genome.

2012 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Urbanowicz ◽  
Anna Kurzyńska-Kokorniak ◽  
Anna Jankowska ◽  
Magdalena Alejska ◽  
Marek Figlerowicz

Although two strand transfer events are indispensable for the synthesis of double-stranded DNA and establishing HIV-1 infection, the molecular basis of these phenomena is still unclear. The first obligatory template switching event occurs just at the beginning of the virus replication cycle and involves two copies of the 97-nucleotide long R region, located one each at the both ends of the HIV-1 genome (HIV-1 R). Thus, one can expect that the molecular mechanism of this process is similar to the mechanism of homologous recombination which operates in RNA viruses. To verify the above-mentioned hypothesis, we attempted to assess the recombination activity of HIV-1 R. To this end, we tested in vitro, how effectively it induces template switching by HIV-1 RT in comparison with another well-characterized sequence supporting frequent homologous crossovers in an unrelated virus (R region derived from Brome mosaic virus--BMV R). We also examined if the RNA sequences neighboring HIV-1 R influence its recombination activity. Finally, we tested if HIV-1 R could cause BMV polymerase complex to switch between RNA templates in vivo. Overall, our results have revealed a relatively low recombination activity of HIV-1 R as compared to BMV R. This observation suggests that different factors modulate the efficiency of the first obligatory strand transfer in HIV-1 and the homology-driven recombination in RNA viruses.

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Said A. Hassounah ◽  
Ahmad Alikhani ◽  
Maureen Oliveira ◽  
Simrat Bharaj ◽  
Ruxandra-Ilinca Ibanescu ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Animal models are essential to study novel antiretroviral drugs, resistance-associated mutations (RAMs), and treatment strategies. Bictegravir (BIC) is a novel potent integrase strand transfer inhibitor (INSTI) that has shown promising results against HIV-1 infection in vitro and in vivo and against clinical isolates with resistance against INSTIs. BIC has a higher genetic barrier to the development of resistance than two clinically approved INSTIs, termed raltegravir and elvitegravir. Another clinically approved INSTI, dolutegravir (DTG) also possesses a high genetic barrier to resistance, while a fourth compound, termed cabotegravir (CAB), is currently in late phases of clinical development. Here we report the susceptibilities of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) and HIV-1 integrase (IN) mutants containing various RAMs to BIC, CAB, and DTG. BIC potently inhibited SIV and HIV-1 in single cycle infection with 50% effective concentrations (EC50s) in the low nM range. In single cycle SIV infections, none of the E92Q, T97A, Y143R, or N155H substitutions had a significant effect on susceptibility to BIC (≤4-fold increase in EC50), whereas G118R and R263K conferred ∼14-fold and ∼6-fold increases in EC50, respectively. In both single and multiple rounds of HIV-1 infections, BIC remained active against the Y143R, N155H, R263K, R263K/M50I, and R263K/E138K mutants (≤4-fold increase in EC50). In multiple rounds of infection, the G140S/Q148H combination of substitutions decreased HIV-1 susceptibility to BIC 4.8-fold compared to 16.8- and 7.4-fold for CAB and DTG, respectively. BIC possesses an excellent resistance profile in regard to HIV and SIV and could be useful in nonhuman primate models of HIV infection.


1999 ◽  
Vol 73 (10) ◽  
pp. 8831-8836 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hongmei Liu ◽  
Xiaoyun Wu ◽  
Hongling Xiao ◽  
John C. Kappes

ABSTRACT Integrase (IN) is the only retroviral enzyme necessary for the integration of retroviral cDNA into the host cell’s chromosomes. The structure and function of IN is highly conserved. The human immunodeficiency virus type 2 (HIV-2) IN has been shown to efficiently support 3′ processing and strand transfer of HIV-1 DNA substrate in vitro. To determine whether HIV-2 IN protein (IN2) could substitute for HIV-1 IN function in vivo, we used HIV-1 Vpr to deliver the IN2 into IN mutant HIV-1 virions by expression intrans as a Vpr-IN fusion protein.Trans-complementation with IN2 markedly increased the infectivity of IN-minus HIV-1. Compared with the homologous trans-IN protein, infectivity was increased to a level of 16%. Since IN has been found to play a role in reverse transcription (Wu et al., J. Virol. 73:2126–2135, 1999), cells infected with IN2-complemented HIV-1 were analyzed for DNA products of reverse transcription. DNA levels of approximately 18% of that of wild type were detected. The homologous trans-IN protein restored the synthesis of viral cDNA to approximately 86% of that of wild-type virus. By complementing integration-defective HIV-1 IN mutant viruses, which were not impaired in cDNA synthesis, thetrans-IN2 protein was shown to support integration up to a level of 55% compared with that of the homologoustrans-IN protein. The delivery of heterologous IN protein into HIV-1 particles in trans offers a novel approach to understand IN protein function in vivo.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aniqa Shahid ◽  
Wendy W. Zhang ◽  
Vincent Montoya ◽  
Peter K. Cheung ◽  
Natalia Oliveira ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTPhenotypic resistance data is relatively sparse for the newest HIV-1 integrase strand transfer inhibitors (INSTIs), dolutegravir (DTG), bictegravir (BIC), and cabotegravir (CAB). In this study, we report the phenotypic susceptibility of a large panel of oligo-clonal patient-derived HIV-1 integrase viruses. Representative clinical samples (N=141) were selected from a large database (N=17,197) of clinically-derived HIV integrase sequences, based on the presence of permutations of substitutions at 27 pre-defined positions in integrase (N=288). HIV-1 RNA was extracted from patient samples and diluted to approximately 500 HIV RNA copies/mL. Using an “oligo-clonal” amplification approach to achieve single-copy amplification, these dilutions were subjected to 12 parallel RT-PCR reactions to amplify integrase. Confirmed clonal amplicons were co-transfected with linearized pNL4.3∆int into CEM-GXR cells. In total, 162 HIV-1 viruses that carried no mixtures and had a unique sequence were harvested, and phenotyped in MT4-LTR-EGFP cells subsequently. Variants with the highest fold change (FC) had G140S and Q148R/H and resistant to all five drugs; R263K was the only single variant conferring >3-FC to DTG, BIC and CAB. There was extensive cross-resistance between DTG, BIC, and CAB and phenotypic resistance values for all the three INSTIs were almost collinear. The greatest exceptions were variants with N155H/G163E or L74I/T97M/F121C/V151I/E157Q/G163K, where both had >70-FC for CAB, while <3-FC for DTG and BIC. While site-directed mutagenesis is invaluable; the systematic selection of representative mutational patterns observedin vivoprovides an efficient way to identify clinically relevant drug resistance.


2015 ◽  
Vol 59 (10) ◽  
pp. 5917-5924 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas A. Margot ◽  
Audun Johnson ◽  
Michael D. Miller ◽  
Christian Callebaut

ABSTRACTTenofovir alafenamide (TAF) is an investigational prodrug of the HIV-1 nucleotide reverse transcriptase (RT) inhibitor (NtRTI) tenofovir (TFV), with improved potency and drug delivery properties over the current prodrug, tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF). TAF is currently in phase 3 clinical studies for the treatment of HIV-1 infection, in combination with other antiretroviral agents. Phase 1 and 2 studies have shown that TAF was associated with increased peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) drug loading and increased suppression of HIV-1 replication compared to treatment with TDF. In this study, selection ofin vitroresistance to both TAF and the parent compound, TFV, led to the emergence of HIV-1 with the K65R amino acid substitution in RT with 6.5-fold-reduced susceptibility to TAF. Although TAF is more potent than TFVin vitro, the antiviral susceptibilities to TAF and TFV of a large panel of nucleoside/nucleotide RT inhibitor (NRTI)-resistant mutants were highly correlated (R2= 0.97), indicating that the two compounds have virtually the same resistance profile when assessed as fold change from the wild type. TAF showed full antiviral activity in PBMCs against primary HIV-1 isolates with protease inhibitor, nonnucleoside RT inhibitor (NNRTI), or integrase strand transfer inhibitor resistance but reduced activity against isolates with extensive NRTI resistance amino acid substitutions. However, the increased cell loading of TFV with TAF versus TDF observedin vivosuggests that TAF may retain activity against TDF-resistant mutant viruses.


2015 ◽  
Vol 89 (15) ◽  
pp. 7722-7734 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huidan Zhang ◽  
Shelley K. Cockrell ◽  
Abimbola O. Kolawole ◽  
Assaf Rotem ◽  
Adrian W. R. Serohijos ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTHuman noroviruses (HuNoVs) are positive-sense RNA viruses that can cause severe, highly infectious gastroenteritis. HuNoV outbreaks are frequently associated with recombination between circulating strains. Strain genotyping and phylogenetic analyses show that noroviruses often recombine in a highly conserved region near the junction of the viral polyprotein (open reading frame 1 [ORF1]) and capsid (ORF2) genes and occasionally within the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRP) gene. Although genotyping methods are useful for tracking changes in circulating viral populations, they report only the dominant recombinant strains and do not elucidate the frequency or range of recombination events. Furthermore, the relatively low frequency of recombination in RNA viruses has limited studies to cell culture orin vitrosystems, which do not reflect the complexities and selective pressures present in an infected organism. Using two murine norovirus (MNV) strains to model coinfection, we developed a microfluidic platform to amplify, detect, and recover individual recombinants followingin vitroandin vivocoinfection. One-step reverse transcriptase PCR (RT-PCR) was performed in picoliter drops with primers that identified the wild-type and recombinant progenies and scanned for recombination breakpoints at ∼1-kb intervals. We detected recombination between MNV strains at multiple loci spanning the viral protease, RdRP, and capsid ORFs and isolated individual recombinant RNA genomes that were present at a frequency of 1/300,000 or higher. This study is the first to examine norovirus recombination following coinfection of an animal and suggests that the exchange of RNA among viral genomes in an infected host occurs in multiple locations and is an important driver of genetic diversity.IMPORTANCERNA viruses increase diversity and escape host immune barriers by genomic recombination. Studies using a number of viral systems indicate that recombination occurs via template switching by the virus-encoded RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRP). However, factors that govern the frequency and positions of recombination in an infected organism remain largely unknown. This work leverages advances in the applied physics of drop-based microfluidics to isolate and sequence rare recombinants arising from the coinfection of mice with two distinct strains of murine norovirus. This study is the first to detect and analyze norovirus recombination in an animal model.


1997 ◽  
Vol 41 (5) ◽  
pp. 1082-1093 ◽  
Author(s):  
S M Daluge ◽  
S S Good ◽  
M B Faletto ◽  
W H Miller ◽  
M H St Clair ◽  
...  

1592U89, (-)-(1S,4R)-4-[2-amino-6-(cyclopropylamino)-9H-purin-9-yl]-2-cyclo pentene-1-methanol, is a carbocyclic nucleoside with a unique biological profile giving potent, selective anti-human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) activity. 1592U89 was selected after evaluation of a wide variety of analogs containing a cyclopentene substitution for the 2'-deoxyriboside of natural deoxynucleosides, optimizing in vitro anti-HIV potency, oral bioavailability, and central nervous system (CNS) penetration. 1592U89 was equivalent in potency to 3'-azido-3'-deoxythymidine (AZT) in human peripheral blood lymphocyte (PBL) cultures against clinical isolates of HIV type 1 (HIV-1) from antiretroviral drug-naive patients (average 50% inhibitory concentration [IC50], 0.26 microM for 1592U89 and 0.23 microM for AZT). 1592U89 showed minimal cross-resistance (approximately twofold) with AZT and other approved HIV reverse transcriptase (RT) inhibitors. 1592U89 was synergistic in combination with AZT, the nonnucleoside RT inhibitor nevirapine, and the protease inhibitor 141W94 in MT4 cells against HIV-1 (IIIB). 1592U89 was anabolized intracellularly to its 5'-monophosphate in CD4+ CEM cells and in PBLs, but the di- and triphosphates of 1592U89 were not detected. The only triphosphate found in cells incubated with 1592U89 was that of the guanine analog (-)-carbovir (CBV). However, the in vivo pharmacokinetic, distribution, and toxicological profiles of 1592U89 were distinct from and improved over those of CBV, probably because CBV itself was not appreciably formed from 1592U89 in cells or animals (<2%). The 5'-triphosphate of CBV was a potent, selective inhibitor of HIV-1 RT, with Ki values for DNA polymerases (alpha, beta, gamma, and epsilon which were 90-, 2,900-, 1,200-, and 1,900-fold greater, respectively, than for RT (Ki, 21 nM). 1592U89 was relatively nontoxic to human bone marrow progenitors erythroid burst-forming unit and granulocyte-macrophage CFU (IC50s, 110 microM) and human leukemic and liver tumor cell lines. 1592U89 had excellent oral bioavailability (105% in the rat) and penetrated the CNS (rat brain and monkey cerebrospinal fluid) as well as AZT. Having demonstrated an excellent preclinical profile, 1592U89 has progressed to clinical evaluation in HIV-infected patients.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (16) ◽  
pp. 8366
Author(s):  
Ignacio Relaño-Rodríguez ◽  
María de la Sierra Espinar-Buitrago ◽  
Vanessa Martín-Cañadilla ◽  
Rafael Gómez-Ramírez ◽  
María Ángeles Muñoz-Fernández

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) is still a major problem, not only in developing countries but is also re-emerging in several developed countries, thus the development of new compounds able to inhibit the virus, either for prophylaxis or treatment, is still needed. Nanotechnology has provided the science community with several new tools for biomedical applications. G2-S16 is a polyanionic carbosilane dendrimer capable of inhibiting HIV-1 in vitro and in vivo by interacting directly with viral particles. One of the main barriers for HIV-1 eradication is the reservoirs created in primoinfection. These reservoirs, mainly in T cells, are untargetable by actual drugs or immune system. Thus, one approach is inhibiting HIV-1 from reaching these reservoir cells. In this context, macrophages play a main role as they can deliver viral particles to T cells establishing reservoirs. We showed that G2-S16 dendrimer is capable of inhibiting the infection from infected macrophages to healthy T CD4/CD8 lymphocytes by eliminating HIV-1 infectivity inside macrophages, so they are not able to carry infectious particles to other body locations, thus preventing the reservoirs from forming.


1994 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Conant ◽  
C. Tornatore ◽  
W. Atwood ◽  
K. Meyers ◽  
R. Traub ◽  
...  
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