Chipping Away at HIV

Meet some of the people featured in the May 2015 issue of The Scientist.

Encouraging developments in HIV research

May 2015's selection of notable quotes

From diagnostics to vaccines, llama antibodies point to new directions in HIV research.

A retired entomologist discovers a world of behavioral diversity in the courtship rituals of a well-studied moth species.

Social networking sites may facilitate the spread of sexually transmitted disease, but these sites also serve as effective education and prevention tools.

Timothy Ray Brown, commonly referred to as the “Berlin patient,” does not want to be the only person cured of AIDS.

Industry layoffs may save a few dollars, at the cost of losing the collective brainpower of thousands of scientists.

More than 50 years after cross-contamination of cultured cell lines was recognized, the problem continues to plague the scientific community.

Whole-body immunoPET scans of SIV-infected macaques reveal where the replicating virus hides.
 

Curing HIV means finding and eradicating viruses still lurking in the shadows.

Sequencing HIV integration sites suggests that clonally expanded T-cell populations may not be the main source of latent virus.

An immune protein previously thought to mark inactive T cells has a free-floating form that correlates with HIV disease progression.

A strain of HIV that has afflicted more than 100,000 people emerged from gorillas.

Exploring viral replication pathways has led Carol Carter from the study of measles and reoviruses to the assembly and budding of newly minted HIV.

Principal Investigator, Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard. Age: 33

Updated classics and new techniques help microbiologists get up close and quantitative.

A grab bag of advances is making Western blots faster, more sensitive, and more reliable.

In times of budget belt-tightening at the federal level, life-science researchers can keep their work supported through private sources.
 

A close cooperation between science, politics, and economics has helped to control one of history’s most destructive epidemics.
 

The Genealogy of a Gene, On the Move, The Chimp and the River, and Domesticated

Early HIV/AIDS posters raised awareness about the disease and later encouraged behavioral changes to prevent its spread.