A group from Department of Urology, University of California, San Francisco, USA, etc. has reported that HIV upregulates the levels of cell-surface fucose and sialic acid in a cell-intrinsic manner, and that memory CD4+ T cells co-expressing high levels of fucose and sialic acid are highly susceptible to HIV infection.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9255966/
Glycans were remodeled on the surface of HIV-infected cells. Both total sialic acid (recognized by WGA, which also binds to N-acetylglucosamine) and α2–3 linked sialic acid (recognized by MAL-1) were upregulated by HIV during infection as shown below.
where, uninfected (UI), predicted precursor (PRE), and infected (INF) CD4+ cells.
In addition, it was confirmed that HIV preferentially infects memory CD4+ T cells from tonsils and PBMCs co-expressing high levels of fucose and sialic acid.
here, infectivity was assessed by HSA positivity.