Fig. 5. Autophagic pathway plays a mild positive role in early HIV-1 biogenesis.
Published evidence indicates that when a virus encodes Nef, induction of autophagy promotes viral yields or egress. An interaction of HIV-1 Gag (the p55 precursor protein, giving rise through proteolytic processing to the capsid, matrix, nucleocapsid and budding regulator p6) and LC3-II has been reported, as well as colocalization by fluorescence microscopy and electron microscopy. An analogy has been made to the Cvt (cytoplasm-to-vacuole targeting) pathway in yeast.