%0 Journal Article
%T HIV-1 Nef Enhances Dendritic Cell-Mediated Viral Transmission to CD4+ T Cells and Promotes T-Cell Activation
%A Corine St. Gelais
%A Christopher M. Coleman
%A Jian-Hua Wang
%A Li Wu
%J PLOS ONE
%D 2012
%I Public Library of Science (PLoS)
%R 10.1371/journal.pone.0034521
%X HIV-1 Nef enhances dendritic cell (DC)-mediated viral transmission to CD4+ T cells, but the underlying mechanism is not fully understood. It is also unknown whether HIV-1 infected DCs play a role in activating CD4+ T cells and enhancing DC-mediated viral transmission. Here we investigated the role of HIV-1 Nef in DC-mediated viral transmission and HIV-1 infection of primary CD4+ T cells using wild-type HIV-1 and Nef-mutated viruses. We show that HIV-1 Nef facilitated DC-mediated viral transmission to activated CD4+ T cells. HIV-1 expressing wild-type Nef enhanced the activation and proliferation of primary resting CD4+ T cells. However, when co-cultured with HIV-1-infected autologous DCs, there was no significant trend for infection- or Nef-dependent proliferation of resting CD4+ T cells. Our results suggest an important role of Nef in DC-mediated transmission of HIV-1 to activated CD4+ T cells and in the activation and proliferation of resting CD4+ T cells, which likely contribute to viral pathogenesis.
%U http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0034521