Northwestern Medicine scientists have developed a novel method of tracking HIV infection, allowing the behavior of individual virions to be connected to infectivity. The findings provide hope for the development of novel therapies for HIV prevention and treatment by providing a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of HIV's lifecycle. This work was published recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
This new approach will allow scientist to understand what a virus needs to infect a cell, where the infection occurs, and timing of specific events, explains principal investigator, Thomas Hope, a professor of cell and molecular biology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
One part of the HIV infection process that has been up for debate is the details of a process called "uncoating," which is when the virus capsid dissassembles after infection.
In this study, the team used a novel live-cell fluorescent imaging system that allowed them to identify individual particles associated with infection. Utilizing this approach they were able to monitor how the HIV capsid uncoats in the cell at the individual particle level. They demonstrated that uncoating leading to infection occurs early in the cytoplasm, around 30 minutes after cell fusion.
Theoretically, this technique should be applicable to any virus explains first author João Mamede, a post-doctoral fellow in Hope's laboratory. In future projects, Hope's research team plans to continue to leverage the method to study infection in later stages of the HIV lifecycle.