In addition to HIV cytotoxicity caused by viral integrations through the mechanism of double strand breaks (Cooper et al., 2013), other mechanisms of HIV-induced death are also present, including IFI16-dependent innate immune system sensing of abortive reverse transcripts following non-productive infection of resting T cells (Doitsh et al., 2014; Monroe et al., 2014). Here, IFI16 is linked to infection.