Manipulating CD4+ T cells by optical tweezers for the initiation of cell-cell transfer of HIV-1

✍ Scribed by Gregory P. McNerney; Wolfgang Hübner; Benjamin K. Chen; Thomas Huser

• Book ID: 102871391
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 643 KB
• Volume: 3
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1864-063X
• DOI: 10.1002/jbio.200900102

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Cell‐cell interactions through direct contact are very important for cellular communication and coordination – especially for immune cells. The human immunodeficiency virus type I (HIV‐1) induces immune cell interactions between CD4^+^ cells to shuttle between T cells via a virological synapse. A goal to understand the process of cell‐cell transmission through virological synapses is to determine the cellular states that allow a chance encounter between cells to become a stable cell‐cell adhesion. We demonstrate the use of optical tweezers to manipulate uninfected primary CD4^+^ T cells near HIV Gag‐iGFP transfected Jurkat T cells to probe the determinants that induce stable adhesion. When combined with fast 4D confocal fluorescence microscopy, optical tweezers can be utilized not only to facilitate cell‐cell contact, but also to simultaneously track the formation of a virological synapse, and ultimately to probe the events that precede virus transfer. (© 2010 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)