HIV-1 adaptation to antigen processing results in population-level immune evasion and affects subtype diversification.

ABSTRACT: The recent HIV-1 vaccine failures highlight the need to better understand virus-host interactions. One key question is why CD8(+) T cell responses to two HIV-Gag regions are uniquely associated with delayed disease progression only in patients expressing a few rare HLA class I variants when these regions encode epitopes presented by ~30 more common HLA variants. By combining epitope processing and computational analyses of the two HIV subtypes responsible for ~60% of worldwide infections, we identified a hitherto unrecognized adaptation to the antigen-processing machinery through substitutions at subtype-specific motifs. Multiple HLA variants presenting epitopes situated next to a given subtype-specific motif drive selection at this subtype-specific position, and epitope abundances correla

SUBMITTER: Tenzer S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4005910 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature