Maybe I misunderstood your analogy (I know its a lot to wrap your head around) but the bacterial enzyme doesn't recognize the viral strand by anything besides the actual nucleotide base pair sequence (which are mismatched when a virus hybridizes). Thats really all I was trying to say
This is a big deal because it shows that this technique which has been used for years to cut out fragments of the genome for replication (via PCR and other methods) could be used to remove the viral elements from a genome. It's a big deal research-wise, but the major problem that will hinder this application from practical application is that HIV hybridizes EXTREMELY fast. Using an artificial bacterial enzyme to remove dna fragments requires a specific nucleotide sequence that it targets. Since HIV "changes appearance" (it actually mutates) at a super accelerated rate (100,000+ faster than animal genome) it makes treating (in this case removing) the virus very difficult. This is the same reason that current HIV treatments are effective at first, but slowly become less and less effective as the virus hybridizes.
I'm not sure about needing a different enzyme for every strain of HIV, but that certainly makes sense. I don't claim to be an expert on this topic, but I certainly find it interesting. Just my 2 cents...
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Maybe I misunderstood your analogy (I know its a lot to wrap your head around) but the bacterial enzyme doesn't recognize the viral strand by anything besides the actual nucleotide base pair sequence (which are mismatched when a virus hybridizes). Thats really all I was trying to say
This is a big deal because it shows that this technique which has been used for years to cut out fragments of the genome for replication (via PCR and other methods) could be used to remove the viral elements from a genome. It's a big deal research-wise, but the major problem that will hinder this application from practical application is that HIV hybridizes EXTREMELY fast. Using an artificial bacterial enzyme to remove dna fragments requires a specific nucleotide sequence that it targets. Since HIV "changes appearance" (it actually mutates) at a super accelerated rate (100,000+ faster than animal genome) it makes treating (in this case removing) the virus very difficult. This is the same reason that current HIV treatments are effective at first, but slowly become less and less effective as the virus hybridizes. I'm not sure about needing a different enzyme for every strain of HIV, but that certainly makes sense. I don't claim to be an expert on this topic, but I certainly find it interesting. Just my 2 cents...