With respect to this paper:
Global Analysis of Host-Pathogen Interactions that Regulate Early-Stage HIV-1 Replication
What does the term "host cellular factors" mean??
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Generally spoken, "host cellular factors" are proteins, receptors etc. of the host cell. In this case, they are important for the HIV infection. The authors write:
Recently, a genome-wide siRNA analysis revealed over 250 host cellular factors that influence HIV-1 infection.
This means gene silencing techniques where used to identify the host cellular factors which are important for the infection, you can find these results here: "Identification of host proteins required for HIV infection through a functional genomic screen." The overall goal is to identify proteins which are important for the function and infection of HIV to understand the interaction between virus and host cell better.
