Hope from early monkeys?

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| Prehistoric Gene Reawakened To Battle HIV |

| from the learning-from-our-distant-cousins dept. |

| posted by kdawson on Friday August 07, @12:23 (Biotech) |

| http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/08/07/134220 |

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Linuss points out research published in PLoS Biology that demonstrates

the [0]reawakening of latent human cells' ability to manufacture an HIV

defense. A group of scientists led by Nitya Venkataraman began with the

knowledge that Old World monkeys have a built-in immunity to HIV: a

protein that can prevent HIV from entering cell walls and starting an

infection. They examined the human genome for any evidence of a latent

gene that could manufacture such a protein, and found the capability in a

stretch of what has been dismissively termed " junk DNA. " " In this work,

we reveal that, upon correction of the premature termination codon in

theta-defensin pseudogenes, human myeloid cells produce cyclic, antiviral

peptides (which we have termed 'retrocyclins'), indicating that the cells

retain the intact machinery to make cyclic peptides. Furthermore, we

exploited the ability of aminoglycoside antibiotics to read-through the

premature termination codon within retrocyclin transcripts to produce

functional peptides that are active against HIV-1. Given that the

endogenous production of retrocyclins could also be restored in human

cervicovaginal tissues, we propose that aminoglycoside-based topical

microbicides might be useful in preventing sexual transmission of HIV-1. "

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