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Biological Chemistry

HIV 'lipidome' looks like lipid rafts

February 20, 2006 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 84, Issue 8

The lipids of enveloped viruses such as HIV-1 are derived from the membranes of infected host cells. Viruses are thought to bud from lipid rafts, which are assemblies of sphingolipids, cholesterol, and raft proteins in the membranes, but the existence of such rafts has been controversial because of a lack of direct evidence. Hans-Georg Kräusslich, Felix T. Wieland, and coworkers at the University of Heidelberg, in Germany, have now used mass spectrometry to show that the lipid composition of HIV-1, or its "lipidome," is very different from that of its host T cells (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 2006, 103, 2641). Compared with T cells, the researchers find that HIV-1 contains much less phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidylethanolamine and much more sphingomyelin and dihydrosphingomyelin. The researchers believe that this unusual HIV-1 lipid composition is strong evidence for the existence of lipid rafts. They also find that inhibition of sphingolipid biosynthesis in infected cells makes the released viruses much less infective to other cells.

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