Lymphoid tissues are sites of soluble and cell-associated antigen sampling of peripheral tissues, and they are key compartments for the generation of cellular and humoral immune responses. Hilar lymph nodes (HiLNs), which drain the lungs, were examined to understand the effects of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) infection on this compartment of the immune system. Histologic and messenger RN...

Various types of neuronal damage have been reported in acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) dementia. We previously demonstrated that inflammation and cortical damage occur independently according to viral tropism in a simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV)-infected macaque model of AIDS dementia. To elucidate the pathogenesis of cortical degeneration, we examined the frontal cortex of SIV-in...

UNLABELLED Mucosa-associated invariant T (MAIT) cells contribute to host immune protection against a wide range of potential pathogens via the recognition of bacterial metabolites presented by the major histocompatibility complex class I-related molecule MR1. Although bacterial products translocate systemically in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected individuals and simian immunodeficien...

The matrix domain (MA) of the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) is encoded by the amino-terminal region of the Gag polyprotein precursor and is the component of the viral capsid that lines the inner surface of the virus envelope. To define domains of the SIV MA protein that are involved in virus morphogenesis, deletion and substitution mutations were introduced in this protein in the context ...

Pathogenesis of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) infection in rhesus macaques begins with acute viremia and then progresses to a distributed infection in the solid lymphoid tissues, which is followed by a process of cellular destruction leading to terminal disease and death. Blood and tissue specimens show the progress of infection at the cellular level but do not reveal the pattern of infec...

Materials and methods: The hemagglutinin genes from 37 δ-cluster SIV isolates were fully sequenced. The isolates were antigenically categorized using a high throughput serum neutralization (HTSN) assay incorporating antisera generated against the four currently circulating clusters of H1 SIV and a commercial vaccine containing a δ-cluster SIV isolate. A subset of the isolates were further chara...

Subversion or exacerbation of antigen-presenting cells (APC) death modulates host/pathogen equilibrium. We demonstrated during in vitro differentiation of monocyte-derived macrophages and monocyte-derived dendritic cells (DCs) that HIV sensitizes the cells to undergo apoptosis in response to TRAIL and FasL, respectively. In addition, we found that HIV-1 increased the levels of pro-apoptotic Bax...

BACKGROUND Thus far, live attenuated SIV has been the most successful method for vaccinating macaques against pathogenic SIV challenge; however, it is not clear what mechanisms are responsible for this protection. Adoptive transfer studies in mice have been integral to understanding live attenuated vaccine protection in models like Friend virus. Previous adoptive transfers in primates have fail...

Examples of convergence of visual and auditory, or visual and somatosensory, inputs onto individual neurons abound throughout the brain, but substantially fewer incidences of auditory-somatosensory neurons have been reported. The present experiments sought to examine auditory-somatosensory convergence to assess whether there is a feature of this type of convergence that might obscure it from co...

Suppression of dendritic cell (DC) function in HIV-1 infection is thought to contribute to inhibition of immune responses and disease progression, but the mechanism of this suppression remains undetermined. Using the rhesus macaque model, we show B7-H1 (programmed death [PD]-L1) is expressed on lymphoid and mucosal DCs (both myeloid DCs and plasmacytoid DCs), and its expression significantly in...