Figure 12.

Multicycle viral infectivity assay in HUT-R5 cells. HIV-1 viruses derived from full-length molecular clones incorporating WT (black), ΔG13 (red), or ΔG15F (green) gp160 were produced from 293T cells and used to infect HUT-R5 cells. Infected cells were split every 3rd day, and virus replication was quantitated by measuring the HIV-1 p24 antigen released in the culture supernatants at different time points post-infection. In agreement with the single-round pseudoviral infection studies, glycan-deficient full-length viruses were found to be infectious in the multiple-cycle assay as well. All the viruses are capable of productive replication. The glycan-deficient viruses exhibit higher p24 levels and faster replication kinetics than the WT, confirming that core gp120 glycans are not essential for HIV-1 viral infectivity.