Link to Pubmed [PMID] – 14576468
J. Biomed. Sci. 2003;10(6 Pt 1):651-60
HIV-1 Tat is essential for virus replication and is a potent transactivator of viral gene expression. Evidence suggests that Tat also influences virus infectivity and cytopathicity. Here, we find that the second coding exon of Tat contributes a novel function for the replication/infectivity of macrophage-tropic HIV-1. We show that macrophage-tropic HIV-1 which expresses the full-length two-exon form of Tat replicates better in monocyte-derived macrophages (MDM) than an otherwise isogenic virus which expresses only the one-exon form of Tat. Similarly, two-exon Tat expressing HIV-1 also replicates better than one-exon Tat expressing HIV-1 in two different models of human cells/tissue reconstituted SCID mice.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14576468