Cellular latency in HIV-1 infection

There are multiple levels of transcriptional regulation that a cell can bring to bear on either native cellular genes or integrated proviral genes. One such level of regulation is inducible sequence-specific transcriptional factors, such as NF-kappa B, which have been extensively investigated with respect to the HIV-1 LTR. This level of control can be modified by organization of the integrated HIV-1 provirus into higher order chromatin structures such as nucleosomes and chromatin domains. The overall level of proviral transcriptional activity within any given cell depends on the relative contribution of each of these levels of control.