Early stages of interaction between HIV-1 and human cells

Alisa Bukrinskaya

: J Antivir Antiretrovir

Abstract :

Introduction: HIV-1 belongs to the lentivirus genus of Retroviridae family which is characterized by long incubation period and this period could be prolonged for 10 years and even longer. Meanwhile, it was recently shown that the early events during weeks or months after acute infection determine the future progression of infection. Important targets for HIV-1 is lymphoid tissue of the gut, and its cells are highly sensitive to the virus. Results: Pulse-chase experiments showed that the amount of Gag precursor during chase is diminishing in cytosol fraction and increases in membrane fraction (the place of viral assembly). Meanwile,the matrix protein, the part of Gag precursor on Gag N terminus, appears in cytosol fraction as individual protein soon after Gag synthesis and its amount is increasing during chase. Conclusion: These experiments show that matrix protein is cleaved from the part of Gag precursor molecules soon after Gag synthesis and could participate in assembly of virus particles as an individual protein. Meanwile, the other part of Gag precoursor is cleaved much later, during the release of virus particles from the cells. It could be suggested that matrix protein possesing two transportation signals - membranotropic and nucleophilic- could take part in the process of virus assembly and in intracellular transport of viral genomic RNA from nuclei to the membrane. Meanwhile, the part of matrix protein still as a part of Gag protein helps Gag to interact with host lipids due to its membranotropic signal and to start the virus assembly

Biography :

Alisa Bukrinskaya was born in Russia in 1928. In1948 Alisa Bukrinskaya entered the Moscow Medical Institute (now the Moscow Medical Academy). On the period of 1952 to 1955, Alisa Bukrinskaya was a postgraduate student at the Microbiology Department of the same Institute. From 1955 until now I work in the D.I. Ivanovsky Institute of Virology in Moscow as a scientific worker, then senior scientific worker, and then as the head of the laboratory and head of the Virology faculty in Medical University. Since 1986 Alisa Bukrinskaya was the Correspondent Member of Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. In 1993 Alisa Bukrinskaya was invited to the Medical School of the University of Massachusetts as professor and worked there till 2005. In 2005 Alisa Bukrinskaya returned to Moscow to her laboratory in Ivanovsky Institute. Alisa Bukrinskaya is author for 300 scientific papers published in the Russian, European and American Journals of 5 monographs and 2 text books in Virology. Since 1985 Alisa Bukrinskaya dedicated all her research to the problem of AIDS