Fig. 7: miR-6727-3p and miR-4722-3p are upregulated in infected CD4+ T cells.

a CD4+ T cells were isolated by negative selection from three healthy donors, activated and infected with HIV-1 (NL4-3) or mock-infected. Expression of miR-6727-3p, miR-4722-3p, a series of cellular miRNAs known to be upregulated following HIV-1 infection and the negative control miR-218-5p were analyzed by qPCR and normalized utilizing the U6 snRNA. The relative increase in the miRNA expression in the infected cells was calculated relative to their expression in the mock-infected cells. All data are representative of a minimum of three biological replicas and are represented as means ± SEM. The change in expression was compared to the negative control miR-218-5p, P value (independent t-test) *<0.05, **<0.01. No RT controls are shown in Supplementary Source Data. b Proposed model for HIV circRNA function in HIV-1 replication. HIV-1 infection promotes miR-6727-3p and miR-4722-3p expression which restricts viral replication. Processing of the viral transcript leads to the production of a series of circRNAs that can sponge miR-6727-3p and miR-4722-3p, inhibit their functions, and increase viral replication possibly via the P2RY8 dependent activation of CREB, AP-1, and c-Myc.