HIV-1 Expressing the Envelopes of Transmitted/Founder or Control/Reference Viruses Have Similar Infection Patterns of CD4 T-Cells in Human Cervical Tissue Ex Vivo
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| Authors: | Melanie Merbah Anush Arakelyan Tara Edmonds Christina Ochsenbauer John C Kappes Robin J Shattock Jean-Charles Grivel Leonid B Margolis |
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| Institution: | 1. Section of Intercellular Interactions, Program in Physical Biology, Eunice-Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America.; 2. University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America.; 3. Medicine, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom.; University of Central Florida College of Medicine, United States of America, |
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| Abstract: | Recently, it was found that 80% of sexual HIV-1 transmissions are established by a single virion/viral genome. To investigate whether the transmitted/founder (T/F) viruses have specific biological properties favoring sexual transmission, we inoculated human cervical tissue explants with isogenic HIV-1 viruses encoding Env sequences from T/F and control reference (C/R) HIV-1 variants as well as with full length T/F HIV-1 and compared their replication efficiencies, T cell depletion, and the activation status of infected cells. We found that all the HIV-1 variants were capable of transmitting infection to cervical tissue ex vivo and in this system preferentially replicate in activated CD4 T cells and deplete these cells. There was no difference in the biological properties of T/F and C/R HIV-1 variants as evaluated in ex vivo cervical tissue. |
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