Fig. 1

HIV-1 infection and immune activation increase MVs release from macrophages and microglia. a MDM were fixed at 7th day post HIV-1 infection and subsequently subjected to SEM for MV detection. Magnification, 6000 ×. c High-magnification image of the corresponding small box area in panel A was shown. Magnification, 24000 ×. c-h MVs were isolated through differential centrifugation from normalized volumes of cultural supernatants and observed under TEM using negative staining. Representative TEM images of MVs from mock-infected MDM (c), HIV-1 infected MDM (d), untreated microglia (f), and LPS-stimulated microglia (g) were shown. e, h MVs numbers in c, d and e, f were quantified by manually counting from a total of 10 random vision fields. Results are representative of TEM images and quantification results are means ± SD of MV numbers from 10 fields of TEM images. ** denotes p < 0.01 in comparison to controls. i, j MVs were isolated from normalized volumes of supernatants in mock-infected and HIV-1-infected MDM cultures (i) or untreated and LPS-stimulated microglia cultures (j). The levels of Alix and flotillin-2 in MVs were determined by Western blot