In addition, the recent discovery that functional Env from virus of VNP and RP individuals similarly triggers autophagy shows the importance of this mechanism in HIV-1 early infection and pathogenesis (Nardacci et al., 2014; Cabrera-Rodriguez et al., 2019), and this is supported by the fact that non-functional, signaling-defective primary HIV-1 Envs are associated with the LTNP-EC phenotype (Casado et al., 2018). Here, ERVW-1 is linked to infection.