Similar to latently infected CD4 + T cells, the J - Lat cells harbor a full - length HIV - 1 genome that is transcriptionally competent, is integrated within actively
transcribed cellular genes, and is inhibited at the transcriptional level.
However, these two life - sustaining processes, which often unfold simultaneously on the strands of DNA, pose a spatial quandary: The
cellular machinery that replicates DNA and the one that
transcribes genes can collide head - on, destabilizing the genome with disastrous consequences.