Figure 2.

Effect of partial CT truncation in gp41 interaction with chol in purified mature viral particles. a) Schematic illustration of gp41 CT truncation mutants. The ΔCT₈₁₁ variant contains a L812: stop codon substitution and lacks the last 43 amino‐acid residues of the cytoplasmic tail. The ΔCT₇₅₀ variant contains a L751: stop codon substitution and lacks the last 104 amino‐acid residues of the cytoplasmic tail. b) Gp41 from input (5% of lysed viral particles) and immunoprecipitation (IP) from viral particles were detected by Western blot with the anti‐gp41 chessie‐8 antibody (green lane), and the interacting radioactively labeled lipid by autoradiography of the same membrane (gray lane). c) Quantification of the chol/protein signal ratio of the truncated gp41 proteins ΔCT₈₁₁ and ΔCT₇₅₀ compared to the wild‐type gp41. The bars and whiskers represent the mean ± SD of experiments from three independent viral purifications (n = 3). Statistical significance was assessed by analysis of variance and Tukey test.