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The molecular mechanisms utilized by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to enter latency are poorly understood. Following the infection of Jurkat T cells with lentiviral vectors that express Tat in cis, gene expression is progressively silenced. Silencing is greatly enhanced when the lentiviral vectors carry an attenuated Tat gene with the H13L mutation. Individual clones of lentivirus-infected cells showed a wide range of shutdown rates, with the majority showing a 50% silencing frequency between 30 to 80 days. The silenced clones characteristically contained a small fraction (0 to 15%) of activated cells that continued to express d2EGFP. When d2EGFP⁺ and d2EGFP⁻ cell populations were isolated from the shutdown clones, they quickly reverted to the original distribution of inactive and active cells, suggesting that the d2EGFP⁺ cells arise from stochastic fluctuations in gene expression. The detailed analysis of …