HIV-1 integrase (IN) is an important therapeutic target as its function is essential for the viral lifecycle. The discovery of multifunctional allosteric IN inhibitors or ALLINIs, which potently impair viral replication by promoting aberrant, higher order IN multimerization as well as inhibit IN interactions with its cellular cofactor, LEDGF/p75, has opened new venues to exploit IN multimerization as a therapeutic target. Furthermore, the recent discovery of multimerization selective IN inhibitors or MINIs, has provided new investigational probes to study the direct effects of aberrant IN multimerization in vitro and in infected cells. Here we describe three complementary methods designed to detect and quantify the effects of these new classes of inhibitors on IN multimerization. These methods include a homogenous time-resolved fluorescence-based assay which allows for measuring EC50 values for the inhibitor-induced aberrant IN multimerization, a dynamic light scattering-based assay which allows for monitoring the formation and sizes of oligomeric IN particles in a time-dependent manner, and a chemical cross-linking-based assay of interacting IN subunits which allows for the determination of IN oligomers in viral particles.
Keywords: Chemical cross-linking; Dynamic light scattering; HIV-1 integrase; Homogenous time-resolved fluorescence; Protein multimerization.