HIV-3 retrovirus and its use

Chemistry: molecular biology and microbiology – Measuring or testing process involving enzymes or... – Involving virus or bacteriophage

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435 691, 4351723, 4352351, 435974, 435975, C12Q 170, C12P 2106, C12N 1500, C12N 700

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053044665

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BRIEF SUMMARY
Substantial progress has been made in our understanding of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome or AIDS. The principal causative agent has been demonstrated to be a non-transforming retrovirus with a tropism for T4 helper/inducer lymphocytes (1,2) and it has been estimated that millions of people world-wide have already been infected. Infection with this virus leads, at least in a significant percentage of cases, to a progressive depletion of the T4 lymphocyte population with a concommittant increasing susceptibility to the opportunistic infections which are characteristic of the disease.
Epidemiological studies indicate that human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), the etiological agent responsible for the majority of AIDS cases and which is currently the most widely disseminated HIV, probably had its origins in Central Africa (3). The discovery of this virus did not necessarily imply the existence of other types of human immunodeficiency viruses. Nevertheless, a second group of human immunodeficiency-associated retroviruses, human immunodeficiency virus type 2 (HIV-2), was identified in West Africa (4,5). An HIV-2 virus is disclosed in EP-A-0 239 425. An HIV-1 virus is disclosed in WO 86/02383. Other similar, but not identical, retroviruses have also been isolated from simian sources (simian immunodeficiency virus, SIV) such as African green monkeys (6,7) and macaques (8,9). The simian isolates have been shown to be genetically more closely related to HIV-2 than HIV-1 but are nevertheless distinct (10).
One characteristic of human immunodeficiency viruses which complicates their comparison is their genetic variability; genetic variants arise spontaneously and with high frequency. A comparison of various HIV-1 isolates revealed that some regions of the genome are highly variable while others are reasonably well conserved (11-16). Similar polymorphisms have also been observed for HIV-2 (17). The regions with the greatest genetic stability are presumably those regions coding for the regions of viral proteins which are structurally or enzymatically essential. The viral genes with the greatest overall genetic stability are the gag and pol genes, while some regions of the env gene and the genes coding for regulatory proteins such as art, tat, sor and 3'orf exhibit a high degree of variability. Some of the major structural features of the gag and pol gene products are apparently shared not only by all of the variants of a particular HIV type, but have, at least to some extent, been conserved between virus types. Antiserum produced against HIV-1 crossreacts with the gag and pol gene products of HIV-2, albeit with a lower affinity than for the corresponding HIV-1 gene products. However, in spite of the demonstrable immunological crossreaction, at the nucleic acid level there is little sequence homology and no significant hybridization between these two viruses can be detected except under very low stringency conditions (17).
A higher degree of relatedness can be demonstrated between SIVagm (STLV-III agm, nearly or completely identical to Human Lymphotropic Virus type 4 (15)) and HIV-2. Immunological crossreaction is not limited only to the gag and pol gene products but extends to the env gene products as well. Nevertheless, genomic analysis of SIVagm and HIV-2 showed them to be genetically distinguishable (19). DNA probes specific for HIV-2, although able to hybridize to SIVagm sequences, hybridize preferentially to HIV-2 (18).
We now report the isolation and characterization of a novel human immunodeficiency virus from a Camerounian woman and her partner. Geographically, this virus comes from a region in Africa located between West Africa where HIV-2 is endemic, and East-Central Africa where HIV-1 is endemic. This isolate is shown immunologically to be antigenically more closely related to HIV-1 than is HIV-2, yet an analysis of partial cleavage products obtained by chemical cleavage of the gag and pol gene products demonstrate that this isolate is neither HIV-1 nor HIV-2. This novel isolate could represen

REFERENCES:
Franchine et al, AIDS Res. Human Retroviruses, 23 (1987) 11-17.
Clavel et al, Science, 233 (1986) 343-346.
Clavel et al, Nature, 324 (1986) 691-695.
Guyader et al, Nature, 326 (1987) 662-669.
Hahn et al, Nature (330) 184-186.
Fukasawa et al, Nature (333) 457-461.

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