Fitness landscape of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 protease quasispecies.

ABSTRACT: Here we show, at a high resolution (1%), the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) protease gene quasispecies landscape from three infected naïve individuals. A huge range of genetic configurations was found (67%, 71%, and 80% of the nucleotide clones from the three individuals, respectively, were different), and these configurations created a dense net that linked different parts of the viral population. Similarly, a vast diversity of different protease activities was also found. Importantly, 65% of the analyzed enzymes had detectable protease activity, and 11% of the minority individual variants showed similar or better fitness than the master (most abundant) enzyme, suggesting that the viral complexity in this genomic region does not exclusively depend on the enzyme's catalytic ef

SUBMITTER: Fernandez G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1865935 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature