CCR5 deletion paper notes
7 pass transmembrane G protein-coupled receptors are a large family of cell surface signaling molecules characterized by a particular topological arrangement where the protein spans the plasma membrane 7 different times.
Direct repeats can cause deletions by homologous recombination between the repeats or sometimes by polymerase “jumping” from one repeat to another.
Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium is the distribution of alleles in the population based on chance for a given allele frequency. Deviations from H-W suggest either positive (i.e. the allele is good for you) or negative selection (i.e. the allele is bad for you).
The read out for the cell fusion experiments in Figure 2 is an assay where one cell (in this case the quail QT6 cells) has a “reporter” gene (in this case the gene encoding firefly luciferase) that is activated only by the bacteriophage T7 RNA polymerase and not host cell RNA polymerase. The T7 RNA polymerase is expressed in the other cell type (in this case the HeLa cells), and can activate the luciferase gene only when the two cells are fused because this results in the T7 RNA pol and the luciferase gene being present in the same cell. Thus lucifease (i.e. light) expression is an indication of how much cell fusion was induced by the HIV proteins.
LTR-luciferase (Fig. 2b) is a different reporter that is activated strongly only in the presence of HIV viral infection. The TAT protein from HIV helps to activate the LTR.
This provides an easy measure of virus infection.