Jan.
24, 2013 — Viruses similar to those that cause AIDS in humans were present
in non-human primates in Africa at least 5 million years ago and perhaps up to
12 million years ago, according to study published January 24 in the Open
Access journal PLOS Pathogens by scientists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer
Research Center. Until now, researchers have hypothesized that such viruses
originated much more recently.
HIV-1,
the virus responsible for AIDS, infiltrated the human population in the early
20th century following multiple transmissions of a similar chimpanzee virus
known as SIVcpz. Previous work to determine the age of HIV-like viruses, called
lentiviruses, by comparing their genetic blueprints has calculated their origin
to be tens of thousands of years ago.
However,
other researchers have suspected this time frame to be much too recent. Michael
Emerman, Ph.D., a virologist and member of the Human Biology Division at Fred
Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and Alex Compton, a graduate student in the
Emerman Lab, describe the use of a technique to estimate the extent to which
primates and lentiviruses have coexisted by tracking the changes in a host
immunity gene called APOBEC3G that were induced by ancient viral challenges.
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