Analysis of the viral determinants underlying replication kinetics and cellular tropism of human immunodeficiency...

Human immunodeficiency viruses (HIVs) isolated from infected individuals show genetic and biological diversity. To delineate the genetic determinants underlying specific biological characteristics such as rate of replication and cellular tropism, generation of hybrid HIV using viruses which exhibit distinct biological feature is essential. We have used three different infectious HIV proviral DNAs, designated pZ6, pHXB2 and pARV, derived from HIVZr6, HIVHTLV-IIIB and HIVSF-2 strains, respectively, to construct hybrid HIV. Proviral DNAs differed in their ability to direct the synthesis of viral particles upon transfection into cells and the viruses derived from the molecular clones exhibited different cellular tropism. Three different methods were utilized to generate hybrid HIV, including construction of hybrid proviral DNA using molecular techniques, intracellular ligation of viral DNA fragments and the homologous recombination approach. The chimeric proviral DNAs with exchanges involving only the long terminal repeat (LTR) region indicated that LTR does not exert influence on the overall level of virus production despite extensive differences in the U3 region of the LTR. Regarding the cellular tropism of HIV, the virus derived from pHXB2 productively infected CEMx174 cells. On the other hand, pARV-derived virus did not show productive infection of CEMx174 cells. The hybrid HIV containing the 3'-end of the genome from pARV and the 5'-end of the genome from pHXB2 was effective in infecting CEMx174 cells. However, the converse hybrid containing the 5'-pARV and the 3'-pHXB2 was not effective in infecting CEMx174 cells. These results suggest that differences in the genes outside of env and nef may play a role in the ability of virus to infect a certain cell type.