Virology: HIV goes nuclear

When the AIDS virus HIV-1 infects a macrophage, thereby reducing the cell's effectiveness in the immune response, it integrates viral cDNA into the chromatin. This suggests that the cell's nuclear membrane could be critical to the infection process. That is confirmed with the finding that HIV has difficulty infecting the macrophages lacking emerin, a component of the inner nuclear envelope. Small molecules that inhibit the interaction between emerin and viral cDNA might therefore help block HIV infection.