Sunday, October 5, 2008

'Fossil' HIV reveals virus history!

Recently international researcher found, a preserved specimen of nearly half a century old lymph node, which has revealed how rapidly the HIV virus has diversified.

All researcher teams around the world has started the research on decades-old tissue samples from African hospital archives in the hope of finding samples containing the HIV virus.

They struck it lucky with a sample that was collected back in 1960, from a woman living in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This is the second-oldest sample of the HIV virus ever found - the oldest is from 1959.

The researchers found that the HIV viral sequences these two samples differ significantly in their genetic makeup.

Their finding appears in the latest issue of Nature.

Using a technique called molecular clock analysis, they were able to plot the two viral sequences' evolutionary path back in time to determine when they diverged. [Continue reading...]

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