Talk:Structure and genome of HIV

History of this article

This material was moved and reorganized from HIV#HIV structure and genome, which now contains a brief summary of the subject. See the history of HIV for changes prior to the move. ←Hob 00:09, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Proposals for further reorganization

1. Currently, the major proteins that make up HIV are described briefly in the Structure section and then again in the subsections for individual genes. References to the proteins are linked to the genes that code for them. I think is confusing since it's not immediately apparent why clicking on "gp120" goes to "env" - and really, most of the information is about the proteins, not the genes. I suggest instead having subsections for each protein, and converting the list of genes into a simple bullet list that says things like "env: codes for the envelope proteins gp120 and gp41".
2. The "genetic variability" section is currently redundant between this article and HIV. Either it should be removed from this article and replaced with a brief "see" link, or the section in the main article should be replaced with a summary and link. ←Hob 00:09, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

This should be under the main article, not here. Specific mutations in proteins could be discussed in this section though. --Bob 00:27, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

OK, that's what I thought. Do you have an opinion on the first point? ←Hob 02:42, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

What you said makes sense --Bob 16:56, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

- I removed

No two HIV genomes are the same, not even from the same person, causing some to speculate that HIV is a quasispecies of a virus.

This was the second sentence of the article. I deleted it, since it does not correctly use the term quasispecies, and I don't have the time to correct it right now. "HIV" is NOT speculated to form a quasispecies, but rather, the many individual HIV virions or HIV populations within a given individual are sometimes refered to as quasispecies.

References

Citation

Can someone change the 1983 on the first line of the main article to 1981; I am unsure how to do citations and someone keeps changing it back to 1983 when the first cases were recorded on June 5th 1981.

Here is evidence, and I am sure that you will find plenty more all over the net and in lots of books:

http://www.kff.org/hivaids/timeline/hivtimeline.cfm —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stevethepirate66 (talk • contribs) 00:14, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually 1983 is correct, 1981 was when the first cases of AIDS were noticed because of the opportunistic infections. The virus itself wasn't discovered until 1983. For the first few years no one knew what was causing it. Luc Montagnier and others in France PMID 6189183, and Robert Gallo and others published at the same time here PMID 6601823. The search for the cause is covered in And the Band Played On. I'll reword the intro sentence to make this more clear. -Optigan13 (talk) 02:34, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

gp160

Does the sequence run gp120→gp41, or gp41→gp120? (Reading N to C, of course.) 02:17, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

links

I just changed a load of the intra-wiki links as they were direting to the wrong place. Apparently someone else edited at the same time and there was an edit cnflict? I dont know what that means though, the links are correct now anywayPhilman132 (talk) 12:21, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Genome length

"The RNA component is 9749 nucleotides long[5]".

This is too specific. The length of the genome varies considerably, particularly in Env which has a primary amino acid sequence ranging from approximately 840-860 residues. This equates to a 60 base discrepancy, and there are outliers which push this up further. If you want to get it right check out the los Alamos sequence database. —Preceding unsigned comment added by David 08:54, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Actually, i've just read a little further and this article is mainly untrue. I'm happy to help out a later date.

David —Preceding unsigned comment added by Contributions/ ([[User talk:|talk]]) 08:58, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the reference, I assume you mean here. I downloaded all the "2008" sequences and get the following stats:

Number of sequences: 1257
Smallest:            7995
Largest:             9868
Average length:      8995.1

The EMBL viral genomes resource returns the following:

 
Number of sequences: 7 
Smallest:            9214 
Largest:             9769 
Average length:      9582.7 

The NCBI viral genome resource gives 9181 and 10359 for HIV1 and HIV2 respectively. I could see EMBL and NCBI being biased towards longer sequences and the LANL may include truncated and other non-functional sequences.

Something like "The RNA component is on average approximately 9kb nucleotides long[5-8]" -- or similar, adding references to these sources would unlikely to be reverted.--Paul (talk) 09:23, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

To consider for inclusion - atomic level structure simulation of capsid

Horowitz, Brian T. (31 May 2013). "Nvidia GPU, Cray Supercomputer Power HIV Research Breakthrough". eWeek. QuinStreet. Retrieved 5 June 2013.

Why isnt this in yet?!?!?! I came to this article expecting this specifically to be focued on and so am quite surprised such a breakthrough (the EXACT, atom by atom) capsid structure model discovery not even mentioned! Why? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.37.135.2 (talk) 15:41, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

If I'm not mistaken, this primary research publication was in the most recent issue of Nature. Wikipedia emphasises secondary sources that help to place primary sources in proper context (see WP:MEDRS). That said, there is probably a place for this finding in the article, and I would encourage you to be bold and edit as you see fit. Cheers! Keepcalmandcarryon (talk) 15:56, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

I've now included an image of the capsid from the structure mentioned above. SPLETTE :] ^{How's my driving?} 10:42, 3 July 2015 (UTC)