Autophagy plays an essential role in HIV-1 infection

Meeting abstracts - A single PDF containing all abstracts in this Supplement is available at http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/files/pdf/1742-4690-6-S2-full.pdf.EMPTYUrl: http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1742-4690-6-S2-info.pdf HIV-1 can infect and replicate in both CD4 T cells and macrophages, and direct cell-to-cell spread is an important route of HIV-1 propagation. Furthermore, this autophagy process is required to trigger CD4 T cell apoptosis since blockade of autophagy at different steps, by either drugs or short interfering RNAs specific for autophagy genes, totally inhibits Env-mediated apoptosis.