Figure 10: Cocaine enhances HIV transcription by promoting recruitment of DNA-PKcs and pTRIM28 (S824) at HIV LTR promoter.

Jurkat cells freshly infected with replication-incompetent HIV, pHR’P-Luc, were exposed to cocaine. Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) assays were conducted to assess the recruitment kinetics of DNA-PKcs, RNAP II, CDK7 (TFIIH), pTRIM28 (S824), total CDK9, and H3K27me3 at the promoter (A & E), Nucleosome-1 (B & F), Nucleosome-2 (C & G), and downstream Envelope regions (D & H) of HIV LTR, using specific primer sets. The results are presented as mean ± SD for three independent experiments, analyzed by two-way ANOVA followed by Tukey’s multiple comparisons test. Asterisks above the bars indicate significant differences. Statistical significance is set as p < 0.05 (∗) compared to untreated cells (Ctrl).