Vital cooperation is shown to be a mode of retroviral replication, which allows the survival of viruses that would otherwise be lost because of a failure to integrate with a hosts DNA.
Weak HIV viruses piggyback onto stronger ones, raising the possibility that the human body may harbor many more HIV viruses capable of replicating and contributing to the development of AIDS than previously thought, a New York University College of Dentistry AIDS research team has found.
Its widely known that only about one in every 100 HIV viruses can successfully complete the process of integrating its DNA with the DNA of the human cell a step that every virus must successfully complete before it can reproduce. But a new study led by Dr. David N. Levy, an Assistant Professor of Basic Science and Craniofacial Biology at the NYU College of Dentistry, has revealed a mechanism that enables some of the other 99 percent of HIV viruses also to replicate and play a potential role in the development of AIDS.
Weve observed a new mode of HIV replication that involves cooperative interaction between viruses, said Dr. Levy, who published his findings today in BioMed Centrals open access journal Retrovirology.
According to Dr. Levy, HIV functions as a community, with those viruses that successfully integrate with the DNA in human cells rescuing the viruses that fail to integrate by providing them with the proteins they need to reproduce. In fact, the viruses that were once thought to be lost because they dont integrate may have an advantage over the others because they can skip several steps in their replication cycle and reproduce faster.
Cooperation between different viruses is yet another one of the many tricks that HIV uses to survive, and raises the possibility that there are more active viruses in the body than was previously thought. Understanding how viruses interact with each other is a key to understanding how HIV evolves and survives the bodys immune responses, which we hope could ultimately lead to the development of new ways to treat HIV infection.
Below are the citation details and links to the manuscripts: MS: 4424850782000098 Viral complementation allows HIV-1 replication without integration Huub C Gelderblom, Dimitrios N Vatakis, Sean A Burke, Steven D Lawrie, Gregory C Bristol and David N Levy Retrovirology http://www.retrovirology.com/imedia/4424850782000098_article.pdf?random=290539
About New York University College of Dentistry Founded in 1865, New York University College of Dentistry (NYUCD) is the third oldest and the largest dental school in the US, educating more than 8 percent of all dentists. NYUCD has a significant global reach and provides a level of national and international diversity among its students that is unmatched by any other dental school.