Figure 9. The proportion of HIV-1 proviruses containing nef increases after CD8⁺ T cell clearance.

(A) Timeline illustrating the experimental procedure for the viral competition assay, as described in Methods. (B) Representative flow cytometry of 3 independent experiments showing p24 values from cells infected with HIV-WT or HIV-ΔNef after the coculture with CD8⁺ T cells. (C) Proportion of HIV-1 sequences containing gag⁺nef^– or pol⁺nef⁺ in infected cells in the presence and absence of CD8⁺ T cell coculture. Results obtained from 3 independent donors are shown. Statistical significance was determined by paired 2-tailed t test. *P ≤ 0.05.