Word: nef
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...strain of HIV that popped up in Sydney intrigues scientists because it contains striking abnormalities in a gene that is believed to stimulate viral replication. In fact, the virus is missing so much of this particular gene--known as nef, for negative factor--that it is hard to imagine how the gene could perform any useful function. And sure enough, while the Sydney virus retains the ability to infect T cells--white blood cells that are critical to the immune system's ability to ward off infection--it makes so few copies of itself that the most powerful molecular tools...
...very least, the nef gene offers an attractive target for drug developers. If its activity can be blocked, suggests Deacon, researchers might be able to hold the progression of disease at bay, even in people who have developed full-blown AIDS. The need for better AIDS-fighting drugs was underscored last week by the actions of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel, which recommended speedy approval of two new AIDS drugs, including the first of a new class of compounds called protease inhibitors. Although FDA commissioner David Kessler was quick to praise the new drugs, neither medication...
What scientists really want is a vaccine that can prevent infection altogether. And that's what makes the Sydney virus so promising--and so controversial. Could HIV itself, stripped of nef and adjacent sections of genetic material, provide the basis for such a vaccine, as Deacon and his colleagues cautiously suggest? Ongoing work on SIV, the simian immunodeficiency virus that causes an AIDS-like illness in monkeys, indicates that this might be less farfetched than it sounds. Ronald Desrosiers at the New England Regional Primate Research Center has demonstrated that when the nef gene is removed from SIV, the virus...
Mansfield, an outspoken conservative on many political issues, may also prefer the political atmosphere at the University of Chicago to that at Harvard, one source said. The Nef chair was formerly held by conservative theorist Allan Bloom, author of The Closing of the American Mind, who died last year...
...spokesperson for the University of Chicago yesterday said the Nef chair is still vacant but refused to confirm that a search is underway...