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Scientists Expose Weak DNA in HIV
Ace905 writes "The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases announced Thursday that they had discovered a very promising 'weak spot' in the HIV virus. The HIV virus, a progenitor to full blown AIDS has eluded all attempts at a vaccine since it was discovered sometime in the 1970's. The major problem with developing a vaccine initially was isolating the virus. Conventional viruses are often defeated with existing drugs, or after being tested against new compounds. HIV has been unique, and staggering in it's ability to resist all attempts at treatment by mutating its own genetic code. HIV is able to resist, with great effectiveness, any drug or combination drug-therapy that is used against it."
This is about finding a stable surface protein on the surface of HIV which may be a good target for the production of an antigen which would elicit a stable immune response as a number of people have antibodies which target the same site. This has nothing to do with DNA, the submitter is just biologically illiterate.
b12 is a family of human antibodies that targets this viral protein gp120. gp120 is therefore the candidate for the vaccine. For vaccines we usually just inject viral protein(s) - as we would in this case - or a weak or dead form of the virus, and let the body make the antibodies (the b12 family in this case).
The talk about 'region' in this article probably refers to a site on the RNA of the virus: this region, encoding protein gp120, is not much changed by mutations - HIV codes genes in RNA since it's a retrovirus.
Also, since HIV targets the immune system, when someone has AIDS - the later stages of the disease in which the immune system is broken (targeted by HIV are T-cells) - vaccination may no longer work, since the immune system is no longer capable of producing antibodies, unless the T-cell count can be brought back to a level in which antibodies can be made.
HIV is a retrovirus so any weak spots would be found in the RNA, not the nonexistent DNA. Interestingly, the BBC decided to sidestep this issue by not mentioning any nucleic acids at all.
You're partly right. It was in 1981 when the disease was discovered/recognized. It was 1982 when the CDC renamed the disease 'AIDS'. Before that, it was known as GRID. (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency) The causitive virus itself wasn't discovered until 1983, and wasn't renamed 'HIV' until 1986.
(Splitting hairs, I know, but it's early and I haven't had my coffee yet...)
What do you mean 'HIV has never been seen...'? That's just not true
Ye have made your way from the worm to man, and much within you is still worm.
Also, HIV is a retrovirus. For this family of viruses, their genome spends the majority of its time, and especially as an infectious particle, as RNA. It is only after infraction does its genome get replicated into DNA (through a process known as reverse transcription using a virally encoding RNA dependent DNA polymerase known as reverse transcriptase.) After being copied into DNA, the pro-virus is then inserted into the host's genome where RNA molecules are made (transcribed) to make viral proteins and full length copies of its genome for packaging into new infectious viral particles. This is a very import aspect of the virus' life-cycle and has many implications for some of the anti-retroviral therapies on the market.