Recombination Enhances HIV-1 Envelope Diversity by Facilitating the Survival of Latent Genomic Fragments in the Plasma Virus Population.

ABSTRACT: HIV-1 is subject to immune pressure exerted by the host, giving variants that escape the immune response an advantage. Virus released from activated latent cells competes against variants that have continually evolved and adapted to host immune pressure. Nevertheless, there is increasing evidence that virus displaying a signal of latency survives in patient plasma despite having reduced fitness due to long-term immune memory. We investigated the survival of virus with latent envelope genomic fragments by simulating within-host HIV-1 sequence evolution and the cycling of viral lineages in and out of the latent reservoir. Our model incorporates a detailed mutation process including nucleotide substitution, recombination, latent reservoir dynamics, diversifying selection pressure driven by th

SUBMITTER: Immonen TT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4687844 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature