Gamete-Targeted Lentiviral Transgenesis: Glowing Cats Fight AIDS
Sunday, September 11, 2011 - 13:30
in Biology & Nature
A genome-based immunization strategy may 'illuminate' ways to combat AIDS and other diseases. Feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) causes AIDS in cats as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) does in people, by depleting the body's infection-fighting T-cells. The feline and human versions of key proteins that potently defend mammals against virus invasion, termed restriction factors, are ineffective against FIV and HIV respectively. A Mayo Clinic team along with collaborators in Japan write in Nature Methods of their efforts to mimic the way evolution normally gives rise over vast time spans to protective protein versions. They devised a way to insert effective monkey versions of them into the cat genome. read more