Figure - PMC

Skip to main content

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

View full-text article in PMC

. 2017 Nov 30;7:16660. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-16600-1

Search in PMC
Search in PubMed
View in NLM Catalog
Add to search

© The Author(s) 2017

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

PMC Copyright notice

TNT formation and functional gap junctional communication are required for effective HIV-replication and HIV-spread. Macrophages were infected with HIV using the 2 protocols described in Fig. 3. (A) HIV-replication was determined by the amount of HIV released into the media by ELISA. Uninfected, HIV infected cultures, HIV-infection plus latrunculin (a TNT blocker, 1 nM), or HIV-infection plus co-application of the GJ blocker cultures indicated that blocking formation of TNT or gap junctions reduces release of the virus (all points, p ≤ 0.005, n = 3). The only no significant treatment was HIV-infection plus acute AGA may be due that we allowed 3 days of replication with the significant cell to cell spread of infection. (B) Quantification of the HIV-p24 positive cells in panel (A). All blockers reduced the spread of HIV-p24 as compared to HIV infection alone (all points, p ≤ 0.0001, n = 3). (C and D) Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analysis of a perpendicular section of a TNT in HIV infected conditions. In both cases, no HIV virions were detected inside of the TNT. However, mitochondria were concentrated in areas where TNT are formed. Thus, the entire virion is not transferred by TNTs.