Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 13, 2026

Assessing the Innate Sensing of HIV-1 Infected CD4+ T Cells by Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cells Using an Ex vivo Co-culture System.
Published on: September 1, 2015
An intrinsic host defense against HIV-1 integration?
1Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center and Laboratory of Retrovirology, The Rockefeller University, New York, New York 10016, USA. pbienias@adarc.org
Abstract:
HSCs are one of only a few cell types that resist HIV-1 infection despite the presence of HIV-1 receptors. An increasing number of genes have been identified that can reduce the sensitivity of cultured cells to retrovirus infection, and in this issue of the JCI, Zhang et al. identify p21(Waf1/Cip1/Sdi1) (p21) as a gene product that can influence the sensitivity of HSCs to HIV-1 infection (see the related article beginning on page 473). Strikingly, p21 appears to alter the fate of nuclear HIV-1 DNA, promoting the formation of circular viral DNA forms rather than functional proviruses.
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