CXCR4 is required by a nonprimate lentivirus: heterologous expression of feline immunodeficiency virus in human, rodent, and feline cells.

ABSTRACT: A heterologous feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) expression system permitted high-level expression of FIV proteins and efficient production of infectious FIV in human cells. These results identify the FIV U3 element as the sole restriction to the productive phase of replication in nonfeline cells. Heterologous FIV expression in a variety of human cell lines resulted in profuse syncytial lysis that was FIV env specific, CD4 independent, and restricted to cells that express CXCR4, the coreceptor for T-cell-line-adapted strains of human immunodeficiency virus. Stable expression of human CXCR4 in CXCR4-negative human and rodent cell lines resulted in extensive FIV Env-mediated, CXCR4-dependent cell fusion and infection. In feline cells, stable overexpression of human CXCR4 resulted in increa

SUBMITTER: Poeschla EM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC109895 | biostudies-literature | 1998 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature