PRESS RELEASE
How HIV smuggles its genetic material into the cell nucleus
JANUARY 24, 2024
Around one million individuals worldwide become infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, each year. To replicate and spread the infection, the virus must smuggle its genetic material into the cell nucleus and integrate it into a chromosome. Research teams led by Dirk Görlich at the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Science and Thomas Schwartz at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have now discovered that its capsid has evolved into a molecular transporter. As such, it can directly breach a crucial barrier, which normally protects the cell nucleus against viral invaders. This way of smuggling keeps the viral genome invisible to anti-viral sensors in the cytoplasm.
The artist’s impression shows how the HIV capsid penetrates the jelly-like permeability barrier of a nuclear pore. To smuggle its genome through this defense line into the cell nucleus, it has evolved into a molecular transporter.
© Johannes Pauly / Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences
Forty years after the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was discovered as the cause of AIDS, we have therapies that effectively keep the pathogen under control, but there is still no cure. The virus infects certain immune cells and hijacks their genetic program in order to multiply and replicate its own genetic material. The infected cells then produce the next generation of viruses until they are finally destroyed. The immunodeficiency symptoms of AIDS result from the massive loss of immune cells that normally fight viruses and other pathogens.
To use the host cell’s resources, HIV must smuggle its genetic material through cellular defense lines into the cell nucleus. The nucleus, however, is closely guarded. Its nuclear envelope prevents unwanted proteins or harmful viruses from entering the nucleus and macromolecules from an uncontrolled escape. Yet, selected proteins can pass because the barrier is not hermetically sealed.
Thousands of tiny nuclear pores in the nuclear envelope provide a passageway. They control these transport processes with the help of importins and exportins – molecular transporters that capture cargoes with valid molecular “passcodes” and deliver them through the nuclear pore channel. A “smart” material turns these pores into one of nature’s most efficient sorting and transport machines.
Article continues... https://www.mpinat.mpg.de/4608591/pr_2403
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Source: https://www.mpinat.mpg.de/4608591/pr_2403
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