Composite Sequence-Structure Stability Models as Screening Tools for Identifying Vulnerable Targets for HIV Drug and Vaccine Development.

ABSTRACT: Rapid evolution and high sequence diversity enable Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) populations to acquire mutations to escape antiretroviral drugs and host immune responses, and thus are major obstacles for the control of the pandemic. One strategy to overcome this problem is to focus drugs and vaccines on regions of the viral genome in which mutations are likely to cripple function through destabilization of viral proteins. Studies relying on sequence conservation alone have had only limited success in determining critically important regions. We tested the ability of two structure-based computational models to assign sites in the HIV-1 capsid protein (CA) that would be refractory to mutational change. The destabilizing mutations predicted by these models were rarely found in a databas

SUBMITTER: Manocheewa S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4664974 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature