An Improved Tat/Rev Induced Limiting Dilution Assay With Enhanced Sensitivity and Breadth of Detection.

Tat/Rev Induced Limiting Dilution Assay (TILDA) is instrumental in estimating the size of latent reservoirs of HIV-1. Here, we report an optimized TILDA containing a broader detection range compared to the reported methods and high sensitivity. Giving priority to sequence conservation, we positioned the two forward primers and the probe in exon-1 of HIV-1. The reverse primers are positioned in highly conserved regions of exon-7. The optimized TILDA detected eight molecular clones belonging to five major genetic subtypes of HIV-1 with a comparable detection sensitivity. Using the optimized assay, we show that only a minor proportion of CD4 ⁺ T cells of primary clinical samples can spontaneously generate multiply spliced viral transcripts. A significantly larger proportion of the cells produced viral transcripts following activation. The optimized TILDA is suitable to characterize HIV-1 latent reservoirs and the therapeutic strategies intended to target the reservoir size.
Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
(Copyright © 2021 Mehta, Gohil, Mishra, D’silva, Amanullah, Selvam, Pargain, Nala, Sanjeeva and Ranga.)