Studying the immune synapse in HIV-1 infection

Abstract

T cells are the main cellular targets of the human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV-1). HIV-1 infection induces pleiotropic effects on the infected T cell that modify the T cell capacity to respond to antigen and facilitates virus replication. HIV-1 infection subverts the formation and function of the immunological synapse altering both actin cytoskeleton remodeling and intracellular vesicle traffic. We describe here our methods to unveil how HIV-1 and in particular its protein Nef modify vesicle traffic to the immunological synapse, perturbing the synapse activation capacity.