This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • HIV/AIDS  • Radiologic Imaging  • Radiologic Imaging, Other  • Infectious Diseases  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Tracy Hampton, PhD

JAMA. 2008;300(5):496.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

A new study details the genesis of individual HIV virions, following their progress from initiation of assembly to budding and release (Jouvenet N et al. Nature. 10.1038/nature06998 [published online ahead of print May 25, 2008]).

Researchers at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center and the Rockefeller University, both in New York City, used total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy to measure and analyze the assembly of proteins to form HIV-1 virions in infected cells, a feat that has not been possible with conventional techniques.

By fluorescently tagging derivatives of Gag, the major structural component of HIV-1, the investigators noted that virions appear individually at the plasma membrane and that their assembly rate is accelerated as Gag protein accumulates in cells. They discovered that 5 to 6 minutes is typically required to complete the assembly of a single virion.

A new imaging study allows scientists to visualize the . . . [Full Text of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?