Breakthrough

Good news on the HIV/AIDS front.

Scientists in the North Carolina have decoded the overall structure of the HIV virus genome that causes AIDS in humans. This breakthrough should help develop strategies for combating the virus with new anti-viral drugs.

"We are beginning to understand tricks the genome uses to help the virus escape detection by the human host," said Kevin Weeks, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the study's main architect.

Like the viruses that cause influenza and hepatitis C, HIV carries its genetic information in single-strand RNA rather than the double strand DNA found in all living organisms and certain viruses. This make is more difficult to decode because, unlike DNA, RNA is able to fold itself into intricate, three-dimensional patterns. This new study should help scientists discover ways in which the RNA genome determines the lifecycle of the HIV virus.

"One approach is to change the RNA sequence and see if the virus notices," said Ronald Swanstrom, a microbiologist at UNC and a co-author of the study. "If it doesn't grow as well when you disrupt the virus with mutations, then you know you've mutated or affected something that was important to the virus."

Science fiction, science fact.

AIDS first came to public notice in 1981, when alert US doctors noted an unusual cluster of deaths among young homosexuals in California and New York. It has since killed at least 25 million people, and 33 million others are living with the disease or the HIV virus.

That's right.

Nearly 1 million people a year, worldwide, have died from complication of AIDS.

This is a big breakthrough.