The HIV-1 Nef protein plays a key role in pathogenesis, as demonstrated by strong selective
pressure to maintain its open reading frame, and disease attenuation when it is deleted.
Among myriad cellular effects attributed to Nef, downregulation of cell surface CD4 and
major histocompatibility complex class I (MHC-I) proteins are the best documented.
However, few data regarding primary isolate Nef functions are available, and most studies
have been performed using transient transfections to express Nef driven by a non …