There was no difference in the rehabilitative outcome.”
“Inflammatory mediators and viral products produced by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-infected microglia and astrocytes perturb the function and viability of adjacent uninfected neuronal and glial cells and contribute to the pathogenesis of HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND). In vivo exposure to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) activates parenchymal microglia and astrocytes and induces cytokine learn more and chemokine production in the brain. HIV-infected individuals display increased circulating LPS levels due to microbial translocation across a compromised mucosa barrier. We hypothesized that HIV-infected microglia and

astrocytes display increased sensitivity to the proinflammatory effects of LPS, and this combines with the increased levels of systemic LPS in HIV-infected individuals to contribute to the development of HAND. To examine this possibility, we determined the in vivo responsiveness of HIV-infected microglia and astrocytes to LPS using our mouse model, JR-CSF/human cyclin T1 (JR-CSF/hu-cycT1) mice, which are transgenic for both an integrated full-length infectious HIV type

1 (HIV-1) provirus derived from the primary R5-tropic clinical isolate HIV-1(JR-CSF) regulated by the endogenous HIV-1 DMXAA long terminal repeat and the hu-cycT1 gene under the control of a CD4 promoter. In the current report, we demonstrated that in vivo-administered LPS more potently activated JR-CSF/hu-cycT1

mouse microglia and astrocytes and induced a significantly higher degree of monocyte chemoattractant protein production by JR-CSF/hu-cycT1 astrocytes compared to that of the in vivo LPS response of control littermate mouse microglia and astrocytes. These results indicate that HIV infection increases the sensitivity of microglia and astrocytes enough to inflammatory stimulation and support the use of these mice as a model to investigate various aspects of the in vivo mechanism of HIV-induced neuronall dysfunction.”
“The baculovirus Autographa californica nucleopolyhedrovirus encodes two proteins with RNA triphosphatase activity. Late expression factor LEF-41, which is an essential gene, is a component of the RNA polymerase and also encodes the RNA capping enzyme guanylyltransferase. PTP/BVP is also an RNA triphosphatase, but is not essential for viral replication, possibly because its activity is redundant to that of LEF-4. To elucidate the role of these proteins in mRNA cap formation, a mutant virus that lacked both RNA triphosphatase activities was constructed. Infection studies revealed that the double-mutant virus was viable and normal with respect to the production of budded virus. Pulse-labeling studies and immunoblot analyses showed that late gene expression in the double mutant was equivalent to that in the wild type, while polyhedrin expression was slightly reduced.