Figure 5

αHGA treatment reduces HIV-1 particle content of Env. (A) Chronically infected ACH-2 cells were induced with PMA for HIV-1 production and treated with the indicated concentrations of αHGA for 72 h. The viral production was determined by measuring extracellular p24 concentrations by ELISA. (B) Virus particles were produced as described in (A) and precipitated with polyethylene glycol followed by immunoblotting towards p24. (C) Immunoblot showing the amount of gp41 present in polyethylene glycol-precipitated HIV-1 particles, produced by ACH-2 as described in (A) for 48 h. The HIV-1 particle content was standardized to the extracellular p24 concentrations measured by ELISA and the gp41/p24 ratio was calculated by densitometry. (D) EM images of immuno-gold labeled gp41 in viral particles surrounding untreated or treated ACH-2 cells with 50 μM αHGA and induced with PMA for 72 h prior to fixation. Arrows indicate labeling of gp41 and the bars represent 100 nm.