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Human cellular restriction factors that target HIV-1 replication

Klaus Strebel1, Jeremy Luban2 and Kuan-Teh Jeang1*

Author Affiliations

1 Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology, NIAID, the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA

2 Department of Microbiology and Medicine, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

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BMC Medicine 2009, 7:48 doi:10.1186/1741-7015-7-48

Published: 16 September 2009

Abstract

Recent findings have highlighted roles played by innate cellular factors in restricting intracellular viral replication. In this review, we discuss in brief the activities of apolipoprotein B mRNA-editing enzyme 3G (APOBEC3G), bone marrow stromal cell antigen 2 (BST-2), cyclophilin A, tripartite motif protein 5 alpha (Trim5α), and cellular microRNAs as examples of host restriction factors that target HIV-1. We point to countermeasures encoded by HIV-1 for moderating the potency of these cellular restriction functions.