Proviruses with identical sequences comprise a large fraction of the replication-competent HIV reservoir.

ABSTRACT: The major obstacle to curing HIV infection is the persistence of cells with intact proviruses that can produce replication-competent virus. This HIV reservoir is believed to exist primarily in CD4+ T-cells and is stable despite years of suppressive antiretroviral therapy. A potential mechanism for HIV persistence is clonal expansion of infected cells, but how often such clones carry replication-competent proviruses has been controversial. Here, we used single-genome sequencing to probe for identical HIV sequence matches among viruses recovered in different viral outgrowth cultures and between the sequences of outgrowth viruses and proviral or intracellular HIV RNA sequences in uncultured blood mononuclear cells from eight donors on suppressive ART with diverse proviral populations. All eig

SUBMITTER: Bui JK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5378418 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature