Overview of the HIV‐1 Lentiviral Vector System

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Abstract
Replication‐defective oncoretroviral vectors have been the most widely used vehicles for gene‐transfer studies because of their capacity to efficiently introduce and stably express transgenes in mammalian cells. A limitation of oncoretroviral vectors is that cell division is required for proviral integration into the host genome. By comparison, lentiviruses such as human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV‐1) have evolved a nuclear‐import machinery that allows them to infect nondividing as well as dividing cells. This unique property has led to the development of lentiviral vectors for gene delivery to a variety of nondividing or slowly dividing cells including neurons and glial cells of the central nervous system and others. This unit is intended to provide an overview of HIV‐1 molecular biology and an introduction to successive generations of HIV‐1‐based lentiviral vectors.