Detection of the HIV-1 Accessory Proteins Nef and Vpu by Flow Cytometry Represents a New Tool to Study Their Functional Interplay within a Single Infected CD4 + T Cell

Abstract

HIV-1 Nef and Vpu exert several biological functions that are important for viral immune evasion, release, and replication. Here, we developed a new method allowing simultaneous detection of these accessory proteins in their native form together with some of their cellular substrates. This allowed us to show that Vpu cannot compensate for the lack of a functional Nef, which has implications for studies that use Nef-defective viruses to study ADCC responses.