Stochastic processes strongly influence HIV-1 evolution during suboptimal protease-inhibitor therapy.

ABSTRACT: It has long been assumed that HIV-1 evolution is best described by deterministic evolutionary models because of the large population size. Recently, however, it was suggested that the effective population size (Ne) may be rather small, thereby allowing chance to influence evolution, a situation best described by a stochastic evolutionary model. To gain experimental evidence supporting one of the evolutionary models, we investigated whether the development of resistance to the protease inhibitor ritonavir affected the evolution of the env gene. Sequential serum samples from five patients treated with ritonavir were used for analysis of the protease gene and the V3 domain of the env gene. Multiple reverse transcription-PCR products were cloned, sequenced, and used to construct phylogenetic t

SUBMITTER: Nijhuis M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC24392 | biostudies-literature | 1998 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature