Researchers Fully Decode HIV Genome For the First Time
Using special techniques developed to sequence RNA, researchers at the University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill, have published the first complete genome of HIV. Laying bare the complete genetic make up of the virus opens up a new era of research, drastically widens the possible experiments that scientists can perform on the virus, and may significantly accelerate understand of how HIV infects humans and evades our immune system. While it may seem odd that scientists decoded the genomes of the Guinea pig, the nine-banded armadillo and the Western European hedgehog before one of the world's most deadly diseases, one must note the byzantine complexity of the AIDS-causing virus. Unlike those animals, and other viruses like influenza, the HIV genome is composed of RNA, not DNA. And unlike DNA, which orders itself into a neat, simple double helix, RNA twists into a wide range of...