Word: retroviruses
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Some DNA viruses become inactive and escape detection by the host's immune system by insinuating their genetic material into the DNA of the host cell. A retrovirus, however, must first use its enzyme called reverse transcriptase to convert its RNA into a DNA molecule, which can then insert itself into the cell's DNA and order the cellular machinery to begin producing more retroviruses. Or it can remain dormant and invisible to the immune system, / awaiting some signal to begin causing trouble. Hidden in the cell's DNA, says David Baltimore, who shared a Nobel Prize for the discovery...
...protein skin. When they invade a cell, the DNA takes over the cell's genetic machinery and orders it to produce copies of the virus, which escape to infect other cells. The victim cell is often killed in the process. But the AIDS virus is a so-called retrovirus and contains single-stranded RNA. Alone, RNA lacks the ability to conquer cells, but retroviruses carry an enzyme called reverse transcriptase. When the AIDS virus invades an immune-system T cell, the enzyme enables the viral RNA to convert to DNA, take over the cell's machinery, produce copies of itself...
...Essex's group has identified the protein products most closely linked to the lethal effects of the retrovirus, and the viral antigen--glycoprotein 120--the likely target for preventive vaccines against AIDS," the Foundation's citation read...
...This virus presents a plethora of targets because it's not a simple retrovirus. The more we know about it, the more complicated it is," Haseltine says. "It's like the difference between a cowboy's coffee not and an expresso maker: they both make coffee, but one comes with all those bells and whistles, so it's a lot easier to mess up. [The AIDS virus] comes with a lot of genetic baggage which might provide theraputic targets...
Even so, for many scientists the evidence provides intriguing links. Anthony Fauci, an immunologist at the National Institutes of Health and long a believer in retroviruses as the cause of human AIDS, asserts, "If a disease which is at least similar has been isolated and transmitted by a retrovirus which is similar to the No. 1 suspected culprit in humans, that suggests we can do the same thing in humans...