To define the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) RNA maturation pathways, we analyzed the intracellular distribution of HIV-1 RNA and the viral regulatory proteins Rev and Tat in transfected COS cells and HIV-1-infected lymphoid C8166 cells by means of ultrastructural in situ hybridization using antisense RNA probes and immunoelectron microscopy. The intranuclear viral RNA occurs in ribonucleoprotein fibrils in the perichromatin and interchromatin regions. The simultaneous demonstration of Rev, Tat, Br-labeled RNA, and cellular proteins SC35 and CRM1 in such fibrils reveals the potential of Rev to associate with nascent HIV pre-mRNA and its splicing complex and transport machinery. In a rev-minus system, the env intron-containing, incompletely spliced viral RNAs are revealed only in the nucleus, indicating that Rev is required to initiate the transport to the cytoplasm. Moreover, env intron sequences frequently occur in the periphery of interchromatin granule clusters, while the probe containing the rev exon sequence does not associate with this nucleoplasmic domain. When cells were treated with the CRM1 inhibitor leptomycin B in the presence of Rev protein, the env intron containing HIV RNAs formed clusters throughout the nucleoplasm and accumulated at the nuclear pores. This suggests that Rev is necessary and probably also sufficient for the accumulation of incompletely spliced HIV RNAs at the nuclear pores while CRM1 is needed for translocation across the nuclear pore complex.During lentivirus replication, the nuclear export of transcribed viral mRNAs from the nucleus to the cytoplasm via the nuclear pore complex is regulated by factors encoded in the viral genome (reviewed in reference 57). The 116-amino-acid Rev protein of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), a lentivirus, interacts with the viral RNA and mediates its nuclear export. A short arginine-rich domain of Rev binds directly to a 234-nucleotide RNA sequence termed the Rev responsive element (RRE), which is localized in intron RNA (33; for reviews, see references 9 and 40). Completely spliced RNAs appear in the cytoplasm independently of Rev. From these fully spliced RNAs, Rev, together with the transcriptional elongation factor Tat, is translated early in infection. Rev enters the nucleus to induce transport of the intron-containing, Rev-dependent unspliced and partially spliced RNAs, from which the late structural HIV-1 proteins are translated (28,40). In addition to the intron-RNA binding capacity, the basic domain of the Rev protein possesses a nuclear localization sequence. Another domain, a short leucine-rich region located at the carboxy terminus of Rev and called a nuclear export signal (NES), is required for interaction with the cellular export receptors (18,19). Both these domains confer on the Rev protein the possibility of shuttling between the nucleus and the cytoplasm (26,35,52,58). Molecular arrangements and mechanisms by which Rev controls posttranscriptional export of RNA during the viral replication cycle are partl...