Fig. 7.

The tetO-CMV virus replicates efficiently without Tat. Replication of HIV-rtTA variants with the tetO-CMV or tetO-CMV-Sp1 promoter configuration in both the 5′ and 3′ LTRs and with the Tat^wt or Tat^stop gene (wt and stop, respectively) was tested in SupT1 cells (A) and PBMCs (B) cultured with 1 μg/ml of dox. The wild-type HIV-1 LAI strain (cultured without dox) and HIV-rtTA-Tat^wt (cultured with 1 μg/ml of dox) were included for comparison. SupT1 cells (A) were transfected with 5 μg of the proviral constructs. PBMCs (B) were infected with equal amounts of 293T-produced virus (5 ng of CA-p24). The CA-p24 levels in the culture supernatants were measured by ELISA. The replication curves shown are representative of data obtained in three (A) or two (B) experiments.