Fig. 7

Gene expression from uDNA fails to down modulate HLA Class I but is efficiently recognized by HIV-1-specific CTL. a Unintegrated HIV-1 down modulates CD4 in both resting (left) and activated (right) CD4 T cells. Resting IL-4 treated CD4 T cells were infected then analyzed 6 days after infection with Integrase wild type (Int-WT) or Integrase mutant (Int-D116N) HIV-1 GFP reporter viruses (left). One half of the cells were then activated with αCD3/CD28 beads then analyzed 2 days later (right). Activation caused a loss of a portion of GFP+ cells, resulting in fewer GFP+ at the time of analysis. The positive control CD4 down modulation data for the integrase WT virus was also a positive control in [43]. b Only integration-competent HIV-1 down modulates HLA A2 in resting (left) and post-infection activated (right) CD4 T cells. Cells were treated as in A but stained with an anti-HLA A2 antibody. c CD8+ cytotoxic T cells that recognize defined Gag and Nef epitopes (see materials and methods) specifically kill GFP+ cells infected with Int-WT or Int-D116N HIV-1. Killing was measured by loss of GFP+ cells, with non-specific killing of HLA Class I mismatched controls subtracted from the total. One of two representative experiments is shown