Heat shock proteins (HSPs) are a family of cellular proteins involved in a variety of biological functions including chaperone activity. HSPs are classified based on their molecular weight and each family has several isoforms in eukaryotes. HSP40 is the most diverse family acting as a co-chaperone for the highly conserved HSP70 family. Some of the isoforms are reported to be induced during heat stress. Few studies have also highlighted the diverse role of some isoforms in different stress conditions including viral infections. But till date, no study has comprehensively examined the expression profile of different HSP40 and 70 isoforms in either heat stress or HIV-1 infection, a virus that is responsible for the pandemic of AIDS. In the present study, we have compared the mRNA expression profile of HSP40 and HSP70 isoforms during heat stress and HIV-1 infection in a T-cell line and also validated the HIV-1 stress results in peripheral blood mononuclear cells. In case of HSP70, we observed that three isoforms (HSPA1A, HSPA1B, and HSPA6) are highly upregulated during heat stress, but these isoforms were found to be downregulated during the peak of HIV-1 infection. While in case of HSP40, we found that only DNAJA4, DNAJB1, and DNAJB4 showed significant upregulation during heat stress, whereas in HIV-1 infection, majority of the isoforms were induced significantly. Stress-dependent differential expression observed here indicates that different HSP40 and HSP70 isoforms may have specific roles during HIV-1 infection and thus could be important for future studies.

热休克蛋白 (HSP) 是参与多种生物功能（包括伴侣活性）的细胞蛋白家族。热休克蛋白根据其分子量进行分类，每个家族在真核生物中都有多种亚型。 HSP40 是最多样化的家族，作为高度保守的 HSP70 家族的共同伴侣。据报道，一些亚型是在热应激期间诱导产生的。很少有研究还强调某些亚型在不同应激条件（包括病毒感染）中的不同作用。但迄今为止，还没有研究全面检查不同 HSP40 和 70 种亚型在热应激或 HIV-1 感染（一种导致艾滋病流行的病毒）中的表达谱。在本研究中，我们比较了 T 细胞系中热应激和 HIV-1 感染期间 HSP40 和 HSP70 亚型的 mRNA 表达谱，并验证了外周血单核细胞中的 HIV-1 应激结果。就 HSP70 而言，我们观察到三种亚型（HSPA1A、HSPA1B 和 HSPA6）在热应激期间高度上调，但发现这些亚型在 HIV-1 感染高峰期下调。而在 HSP40 的情况下，我们发现只有 DNAJA4、DNAJB1 和 DNAJB4 在热应激期间表现出显着的上调，而在 HIV-1 感染中，大多数亚型都被显着诱导。这里观察到的应激依赖性差异表达表明不同的 HSP40 和 HSP70 亚型可能在 HIV-1 感染过程中具有特定的作用，因此对未来的研究可能很重要。