{"doi":"10.1371/journal.ppat.1012172","title":"Direct and indirect effects of CYTOR lncRNA regulate HIV gene expression","abstract":"The implementation of antiretroviral therapy (ART) has effectively restricted the transmission of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and improved overall clinical outcomes. However, a complete cure for HIV remains out of reach, as the virus persists in a stable pool of infected cell reservoir that is resistant to therapy and thus a main barrier towards complete elimination of viral infection. While the mechanisms by which host proteins govern viral gene expression and latency are well-studied, the emerging regulatory functions of non-coding RNAs (ncRNA) in the context of T cell activation, HIV gene expression and viral latency have not yet been thoroughly explored. Here, we report the identification of the Cytoskeleton Regulator (CYTOR) long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) as an activator of HIV gene expression that is upregulated following T cell stimulation. Functional studies show that CYTOR suppresses viral latency by directly binding to the HIV promoter and associating with the cellular positive transcription elongation factor (P-TEFb) to activate viral gene expression. CYTOR also plays a global role in regulating cellular gene expression, including those involved in controlling actin dynamics. Depletion of CYTOR expression reduces cytoplasmic actin polymerization in response to T cell activation. In addition, treating HIV-infected cells with pharmacological inhibitors of actin polymerization reduces HIV gene expression. We conclude that both direct and indirect effects of CYTOR regulate HIV gene expression.","journal":"PLoS Pathogens","year":2024,"id":438266,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":10,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9514,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1248484,"name":"Lopamudra Sadhu","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1248074,"name":"M. Hasanuzzaman","orcid":"0000-0001-9642-5406","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":277767,"name":"Koh Fujinaga","orcid":"0000-0003-4242-9078","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":488557,"name":"Jacob C. Schwartz","orcid":"0000-0002-5205-564X","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":671162,"name":"O. Fackler","orcid":"0000-0003-2982-4209","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1037315,"name":"Ran Taube","orcid":"0000-0002-2062-4537","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1037714,"name":"Alona Kuzmina","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":67,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:00:38.888629Z","pmid":"38662769","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}