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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."
Transmitted through the sharing of unsterilized ATM machines, IC circuits, LCD displays and PIN numbers, the HIV virus is a deadly threat to humanity.
Attack it's weak spot for massive damage.
The story that is referenced in the BBC news article refers to the structure of an antibody binding the gp120 surface glycoprotein of HIV. This has nothing to do with 'weak' DNA. The reason why this is exciting is that the b12 region is relatively invariable, whereas most antibodies made against HIV bind variable regions of the surface glycoproteins that are prone to change from virus to virus as the genome is mutated. The majority of anti-HIV antibodies are therefore only useful against specific isolates and can be easily escaped by mutation. Antibodies against the b12 region are therefore potential vaccine candidates.
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The article summary needs further assistance. AIDS was identified in 1981.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Yeah, pretending that HIV "does" things intentionally to avoid vaccination is highly misleading. The problem is that viruses in general replicate quickly, and HIV in particular mutates very quickly from one generation to the next, while remaining viable. This lets an infection explore the parameter space of possible genotypes very fast. To be effective, a treatment needs to target some relatively stable feature of the virus, and eliminate the virus faster than the population can mutate away from that vulnerability. Unfortunately, HIV usually wins on both counts.
...that when I RTFA, the only thing I could think of was the Yavin briefing on the Death Star?
"Great shot, kid, that was one-in-a-million!"
God, I'm geeky...
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
From the article:
They have published an atomic-level image in Nature showing the antibody, b12, attacking part of a protein on surface of the virus.
So, yes it has been published - and Nature is a top-tier journal.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
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 mean this vast plague upon mankind has a single point of failure? Wow! They really are close then. I suggest two possible courses of action from here: 1. Figure out how to plug a Powerbook into it, then type furiously. 2. Fly along the equator of the virus at top speed and fire into its exhaust port.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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.
More specifically, HIV is a retrovirus. This means that as a standalone virus it contains RNA, but when it enters a cell, it uses reverse transcriptase to transcribe its RNA sequence into the equivalent DNA strand, which the cell's normal transcription/translation mechanism picks up and turns into the proteins and RNA that make the virus work.
/. article.
It's the reverse transcription process that has a high error rate, which is why HIV's rate of mutation is so high. This results in a lot of nonviable DNA, but the virus takes years to work anyway. Eventually, some of these mutations result in a change in the proteins that are attacked by the various HIV drugs so that those drugs no longer work.
As for whether your statement about knowledge in treating various types of viruses is true or not, I don't know, but scientists do know an awful lot about HIV in particular. Each drug is meant to target a specific protein coded by the virus's genome. Being able to use drugs to target a "weak spot" (a spot that is brittle versus mutation) in the genome directly would be a major coup against the virus. This would be a great application for the grid computing mentioned in an earlier
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They're not exactly tough to dig up these days if you know how to use google, so I must assume that you did not even do a rudimentary search for yourself before believing that documentary you watched.