Antiretroviral potential of human tripartite motif-5 and related proteins
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Updated: Aug 7, 2026

Genotypic Inference of HIV-1 Tropism Using Population-based Sequencing of V3
Published on: December 27, 2010
Fengwen Zhang1, Theodora Hatziioannou, David Perez-Caballero
1Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center and the Laboratory of Retrovirology, the Rockefeller University, 455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016, USA.
Abstract:
TRIM5alpha is a potent inhibitor of infection by diverse retroviruses and is encoded by one of a large family of TRIM genes. We found that several TRIM motifs among a panel of selected human TRIM proteins (TRIM1, 5, 6, 18, 19, 21 22, 34) could inhibit infection when artificially targeted to an incoming HIV-1 capsid. Conversely, when ectopically expressed as authentic full-length proteins, most lacked activity against a panel of retroviruses. The exceptions were TRIM1, TRIM5 and TRIM34 proteins. Weak but specific inhibition of HIV-2/SIV(MAC) and EIAV by TRIM34 was noted, and human TRIM5alpha modestly, but specifically, inhibited an HIV-1 strain carrying a mutation in the cyclophilin binding loop (G89V). Restriction activity observed in ectopic expression assays was sometimes not detectable in corresponding RNAi-based knockdown experiments. However, endogenous owl monkey TRIMCyp potently inhibited an SIV(AGM) strain. Overall, sporadic examples of intrinsic antiretroviral activity exist in this panel of TRIM proteins.
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