Research on retroviruses and resistance to them in mice and other organisms surged when the war on cancer was declared in 1971. As scientists began to realize, however, that retroviruses played less of a role in cancer than previously thought, research diminished—only to be rekindled by the AIDS blight in the 1980s. "We'd be nowhere on HIV if there hadn't been years studying these weird mouse viruses," says David Sanders, associate professor, Markey Center for Structural Biology, Purdue University department of biosciences, who works with the Fv-4 resistance gene. Though questions remain—especially about the immune system's role in resistance—Sanders and other researchers hope that the information they uncover could lead to gene therapies that can fight the spread of HIV.
Sanders and his team believe they have pinpointed the amino acid sequence that causes this interference.1 In addition, according to Sander's paper, if per chance a cell is infected, Fv-4 ...
