Cell Endogenous The Protein Ttrap And Hiv-1 Integrase Interaction Of Lentiviral Integration

TTRAP is a recently identified Promyelocytic Leukemia Nuclear Bodies(PML-NB) associated protein that involved in NF-kB pathway. By means of yeast-two-hybrid analysis, TTRAP was identified as a HIV-1 integrase interacting protein. The interaction was further verified by co-immunoprecipitation, GST pull down assay and intracellular imaging. The deletion assay suggested that the NH₂-terminal 180 residues of TTRAP were responsible for the interaction with HIV-1 integrase. In stable TTRAP knockdown cell lines, the integration of viral vectors decreased significantly compared with non-silencing cell lines. On the contrary, overexpression of TTRAP by transient transfection increased the percentage of integration events. This is the first time that TTRAP is shown to interact with HIV-1 IN and facilitates lentiviral vector integration. These findings revealed a new function of TTRAP and expanded our understanding of the cellular response to HIV-1 infection. The interaction between TTRAP and HIV-1 IN may be useful in designing new anti-viral strategies as well as for improving the efficiency of lentiviral-vector-mediated gene delivery.