Genomic profiling of HIV-1 integration in microglia links viral insertions to TAD organization

Abstract

HIV-1 persists in anatomically distinct cellular and tissue reservoirs as a stably integrated provirus that is a major barrier to HIV-1 cure. Proviral insertions are largely characterized in blood cells, while HIV-1 integration patterns remain unexplored in microglia, the major brain reservoir. Here, we employ genomics approaches to obtain the first HIV-1 integration site (IS) profiling in microglia and perform in-depth analysis of transcriptome, specific histone signatures and chromatin accessibility on different genomic scales. We show that HIV-1 follows genic insertion patterns into introns of actively transcribed genes, characteristic of blood reservoirs. HIV-1 insertional hotspot analysis by non-negative matrix factorization (NMF)-based approach clusters IS signatures with genic- and super-enhancers. Chromatin accessibility transcription factor (TF) footprints reveal that increased CTCF binding marks latently infected microglia compared to productively infected one. We identify CTCF-enriched topologically associated domain (TAD) borders with signatures of active chromatin as a neighborhood for HIV-1 integration in microglia and CD4+ T cells. Our findings further strengthen the notion that HIV-1 follows the patterns of host cell genome organization to integrate and to establish the silent proviral state and reveal that these principles are largely conserved in different anatomical latent reservoirs.