Thirty-five years after the identification of HIV-1 as the causative agent of AIDS, we are still in search of vaccines and treatments to eradicate this devastating infectious disease. Progress has been made in understanding the molecular pathogenesis of this infection, which has been crucial for the development of the current therapy regimens. However, despite their efficacy at limiting active viral replication, these drugs are unable to purge the latent reservoir: a pool of cells that harbor transcriptionally inactive, but replication-competent HIV-1 proviruses, and that represent the main barrier to eradicate HIV-1 from affected individuals. In this review, we discuss advances in the field that have allowed a better understanding of HIV-1 latency, including the diverse cell types that constitute the latent reservoir, factors influencing latency, tools to study HIV-1 latency, as well as current and prospective therapeutic approaches to target these latently infected cells, so a functional cure for HIV/AIDS can become a reality.

Macroautophagy/autophagy is an auto-digestive pro-survival pathway activated in response to stress to target cargo for lysosomal degradation. In recent years, autophagy has become prominent as an innate antiviral defense mechanism through multiple processes, such as targeting virions and viral components for elimination. These exciting findings have encouraged studies on the ability of autophagy to restrict HIV. However, the role of autophagy in HIV infection remains unclear. Whereas some reports indicate that autophagy is detrimental for HIV, others have claimed that HIV deliberately activates this pathway to increase its infectivity. Moreover, these contrasting findings seem to depend on the cell type investigated. Here, we show that autophagy poses a hurdle for HIV replication, significantly reducing virion production. However, HIV-1 uses its accessory protein Nef to counteract this restriction. Previous studies have indicated that Nef affects autophagy maturation by preventing the fusion between autophagosomes and lysosomes. Here, we uncover that Nef additionally blocks autophagy initiation by enhancing the association between BECN1 and its inhibitor BCL2, and this activity depends on the cellular E3 ligase PRKN. Remarkably, the ability of Nef to counteract the autophagy block is more frequently observed in pandemic HIV-1 and its simian precursor SIV cpz infecting chimpanzees than in HIV-2 and its precursor SIV smm infecting sooty mangabeys. In summary, our findings demonstrate that HIV-1 is susceptible to autophagy restriction and define Nef as the primary autophagy antagonist of this antiviral process.

Lysosomal membrane damage represents a threat to cell viability. As such, cells have evolved sophisticated mechanisms to maintain lysosomal integrity. Small membrane lesions are detected and repaired by the endosomal sorting complex required for transport (ESCRT) machinery while more extensively damaged lysosomes are cleared by a galectin‐dependent selective macroautophagic pathway (lysophagy). In this study, we identify a novel role for the autophagosome‐lysosome tethering factor, TECPR1, in lysosomal membrane repair. Lysosomal damage promotes TECPR1 recruitment to damaged membranes via its N‐terminal dysferlin domain. This recruitment occurs upstream of galectin and precedes the induction of lysophagy. At the damaged membrane, TECPR1 forms an alternative E3‐like conjugation complex with the ATG12‐ATG5 conjugate to regulate ATG16L1‐independent unconventional LC3 lipidation. Abolishment of LC3 lipidation via ATG16L1/TECPR1 double knockout impairs lysosomal recovery following damage.

As intracellular parasites, viruses hijack the cellular machinery to facilitate their replication and spread. This includes favouring the expression of their viral genes over host genes, appropriation of cellular molecules, and manipulation of signalling pathways, including the post-translational machinery. HIV, the causative agent of AIDS, is notorious for using post-translational modifications to generate infectious particles. Here, we discuss the mechanisms by which HIV usurps the ubiquitin and SUMO pathways to modify both viral and host factors to achieve a productive infection, and also how the host innate sensing system uses these post-translational modifications to hinder HIV replication.

Ubiquitination is a process that acts upon every step of the HIV replication cycle. The activity, subcellular localization, and stability of HIV dependency factors as well as negative modulators can be affected by ubiquitination. These modifications consequently have an impact on the progression and outcome of infection. Additionally, recent findings suggest new roles for ubiquitination in the interplay between HIV and the cellular environment, specifically in the interactions between HIV, autophagy and apoptosis. On one hand, autophagy is a defense mechanism against HIV that promotes the degradation of the viral protein Gag, likely through ubiquitination. Gag is an essential structural protein that drives virion assembly and release. Interestingly, the ubiquitination of Gag is vital for HIV replication. Hence, this post-translational modification in Gag represents a double-edged sword: necessary for virion biogenesis, but potentially detrimental under conditions of autophagy activation. On the other hand, HIV uses Nef to circumvent autophagy-mediated restriction by promoting the ubiquitination of the autophagy inhibitor BCL2 through Parkin/PRKN. Although the Nef-promoted ubiquitination of BCL2 occurs in both the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and mitochondria, only ER-associated ubiquitinated BCL2 arrests the progression of autophagy. Importantly, both mitochondrial BCL2 and PRKN are tightly connected to mitochondrial function and apoptosis. Hence, by enhancing the PRKN-mediated ubiquitination of BCL2 at the mitochondria, HIV might promote apoptosis. Moreover, this effect of Nef might account for HIV-associated disorders. In this article, we outline our current knowledge and provide perspectives of how ubiquitination impacts the molecular interactions between HIV, autophagy and apoptosis.

Pore-forming toxins (PFTs) are important virulence factors produced by many pathogenic bacteria. Here, we show that the Vibrio cholerae toxin MakA is a novel cholesterol-binding PFT that induces non-canonical autophagy in a pH-dependent manner. MakA specifically binds to cholesterol on the membrane at pH < 7. Cholesterol-binding leads to oligomerization of MakA on the membrane and pore formation at pH 5.5. Unlike other cholesterol-dependent cytolysins (CDCs) which bind cholesterol through a conserved cholesterol-binding motif (Thr-Leu pair), MakA contains an Ile-Ile pair that is essential for MakA-cholesterol interaction. Following internalization, endosomal acidification triggers MakA pore-assembly followed by ESCRT-mediated membrane repair and V-ATPase-dependent unconventional LC3 lipidation on the damaged endolysosomal membranes. These findings characterize a new cholesterol-binding toxin that forms pores in a pH-dependent manner and reveals the molecular mechanism of host autophagy manipulation.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), as the causative agent of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, continues representing one of the main health concerns worldwide. Autophagy, in addition to its role in cellular homeostasis and metabolism, plays an important part for the host antiviral immunity. However, viruses including SARS-CoV-2 have evolved diverse mechanisms to not only overcome autophagy’s antiviral pressure but also manipulate its machinery in order to enhance viral replication and propagation. Here, we discuss our current knowledge on the impact that autophagy exerts on SARS-CoV-2 replication, as well as the different counteracting measures that this virus has developed to manipulate autophagy’s complex machinery. Some of the elements regarding this interplay may become future therapeutic targets in the fight against SARS-CoV-2.

Background Autophagy plays an important role as a cellular defense mechanism against intracellular pathogens, like viruses. Specifically, autophagy orchestrates the recruitment of specialized cargo, including viral components needed for replication, for lysosomal degradation. In addition to this primary role, the cleavage of viral structures facilitates their association with pattern recognition receptors and MHC-I/II complexes, which assists in the modulation of innate and adaptive immune responses against these pathogens. Importantly, whereas autophagy restricts the replicative capacity of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), this virus has evolved the gene nef to circumvent this process through the inhibition of early and late stages of the autophagy cascade. Despite recent advances, many details of the mutual antagonism between HIV-1 and autophagy still remain unknown. Here, we uncover the genetic determinants that drive the autophagy-mediated restriction of HIV-1 as well as the counteraction imposed by Nef. Additionally, we also examine the implications of autophagy antagonism in HIV-1 infectivity. Results We found that sustained activation of autophagy potently inhibits HIV-1 replication through the degradation of HIV-1 Gag, and that this effect is more prominent for nef-deficient viruses. Gag re-localizes to autophagosomes where it interacts with the autophagosome markers LC3 and SQSTM1. Importantly, autophagy-mediated recognition and recruitment of Gag requires the myristoylation and ubiquitination of this virus protein, two post-translational modifications that are essential for Gag’s central role in virion assembly and budding. We also identified residues T48 and A49 in HIV-1 NL4-3 Nef as responsible for impairing the early stages of autophagy. Finally, a survey of pandemic HIV-1 transmitted/founder viruses revealed that these isolates are highly resistant to autophagy restriction. Conclusions This study provides evidence that autophagy antagonism is important for virus replication and suggests that the ability of Nef to counteract autophagy may have played an important role in mucosal transmission. Hence, disabling Nef in combination with the pharmacological manipulation of autophagy represents a promising strategy to prevent HIV spread.