Lentiviral Gene Transfer Method to Study Integrin Function in T Lymphocytes

Integrins play critical roles in adhesion and migration of T cells during an immune response and inflammation. It is of great importance to understand the molecular pathways that regulate integrin function in T cells. Lentiviral vector-based gene transfer method has emerged in the past decade as an efficient means of transferring genes into both resting and activated hard-to-transfect cells, including T cells to knockdown gene expression. Therefore, this technology could be utilized effectively to study different aspects of integrin function or even to perform genome-wide RNAi screens to look globally for regulators of integrin function in T cells. In this chapter, we provide the simplest protocol to infect activated CD4⁺ human T cells with high efficiency.