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Updated: Mar 6, 2026

Imaging of HIV-1 Envelope-induced Virological Synapse and Signaling on Synthetic Lipid Bilayers
Published on: March 8, 2012
Studying the Immune Synapse in HIV-1 Infection
Iratxe Del Río-Iñiguez1,2, Jérôme Bouchet1,2, Andrés Alcover3,4
1Institut Pasteur, Department of Immunology, Lymphocyte Cell Biology Unit, Paris, France.
Abstract:
T cells are the main cellular targets of the human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV-1). HIV-1 infection induces pleiotropic effects on the infected T cell that modify the T cell capacity to respond to antigen and facilitates virus replication. HIV-1 infection subverts the formation and function of the immunological synapse altering both actin cytoskeleton remodeling and intracellular vesicle traffic. We describe here our methods to unveil how HIV-1 and in particular its protein Nef modify vesicle traffic to the immunological synapse, perturbing the synapse activation capacity.
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