摘要
While human immunodeficiency virus 1(HIV-1) infectionis controlled through continuous, life-long use of a combination of drugs targeting different steps of the virus cycle, HIV-1 is never completely eradicated from the body. Despite decades of research there is still no effective vaccine to prevent HIV-1 infection. Therefore, the possibility of an RNA interference(RNAi)-based cure has become an increasingly explored approach. Endogenous gene expression is controlled at both, transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels by noncoding RNAs, which act through diverse molecular mechanisms including RNAi. RNAi has the potential to control the turning on/off of specific genes through transcriptional gene silencing(TGS), as well as finetuning their expression through post-transcriptional gene silencing(PTGS). In this review we will describe in detail the canonical RNAi pathways for PTGS and TGS, the relationship of TGS with other silencing mechanisms and will discuss a variety of approaches developed to suppress HIV-1 via manipulation of RNAi. We will briefly compare RNAi strategies against other approaches developed to target the virus, highlighting their potential to overcome the major obstacle to finding a cure, which is the specific targeting of the HIV-1 reservoir within latently infected cells.
While human immunodeficiency virus 1(HIV-1) infectionis controlled through continuous, life-long use of a combination of drugs targeting different steps of the virus cycle, HIV-1 is never completely eradicated from the body. Despite decades of research there is still no effective vaccine to prevent HIV-1 infection. Therefore, the possibility of an RNA interference(RNAi)-based cure has become an increasingly explored approach. Endogenous gene expression is controlled at both, transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels by noncoding RNAs, which act through diverse molecular mechanisms including RNAi. RNAi has the potential to control the turning on/off of specific genes through transcriptional gene silencing(TGS), as well as finetuning their expression through post-transcriptional gene silencing(PTGS). In this review we will describe in detail the canonical RNAi pathways for PTGS and TGS, the relationship of TGS with other silencing mechanisms and will discuss a variety of approaches developed to suppress HIV-1 via manipulation of RNAi. We will briefly compare RNAi strategies against other approaches developed to target the virus, highlighting their potential to overcome the major obstacle to finding a cure, which is the specific targeting of the HIV-1 reservoir within latently infected cells.
