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HIV-1 Accessory Proteins: VpR

Protocol
Part of the Methods in Molecular Biology book series (MIMB, volume 1087)

Abstract

HIV-1 viral protein R (VpR) is a multifunctional protein that plays specific roles at multiple stages of the HIV-1 viral life cycle and affects anti-HIV functions of the immune cells. VpR is required for efficient viral replication in nondividing cells such as macrophages, and it promotes, to some extent, viral replication in the proliferating target CD4+ T cells. A number of specific activities that may contribute to these effects of VpR have been proposed. In this chapter, we describe two best characterized activities of VpR, nuclear import of the HIV-1 preintegration complex (PIC) and induction of cell cycle G2 arrest, focusing on the methods used for their demonstration.

Key words

HIV-1 Vpr Cell cycle G2 arrest Nuclear transport Fission yeast 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by the District of Columbia Developmental Center for AIDS Research (DC D-CFAR), NIH-funded program (1P30AI087714 – 01, MB), and NIH-NINDS-R21-NS063880 (RZ). The authors would like to thank Ge Li for technical assistance of this manuscript.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Tropical Medicine, School of Medicine and Health SciencesThe George Washington UniversityWashington, DCUSA
  2. 2.School of Medicine and Health SciencesGeorge Washington UniversityWashington, DCUSA

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