Skip to main content
. 2013 Mar 28;9(3):e1003242. doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1003242

Figure 4. Restoration of vif occurs only following direct virus injection into the thymus.

Figure 4

(A) Longitudinal analysis of plasma viral load in NSG-BLT humanized mice infected with HIVJR-CSF vifFS directly into the human thymic implant, spleen, liver, or lung. Solid symbols represent mice infected with a low dose of virus (9×104 TCIU), open symbols represent the high dose infection (3.6×105 TCIU). (B) Detection of HIV DNA (+) by nested PCR from the tissues of humanized mice in panel A. Negative tissues (−) yielded no amplified viral DNA using two independent nested PCR primer sets targeting separate regions of the viral genome. (C) Percentage of putative APOBEC3 mutation sites (GG, GA, GY) that were mutated in 44 viral DNA sequences amplified from the tissues of mice injected with HIVJR-CSF vifFS. Mice injected into the thymic implant had no GG to AG mutations in any tissue whereas HIV DNA from four tissues of mouse FS24 injected into the spleen is hypermutated. (D) G to A mutational profile of all viral DNA from mouse FS24 which failed to restore the vif ORF. Percentages indicate the proportion of G to A mutations occurring at GG (blue), GA (red), or GY (black) sites.