A latest method could make it possible to discover essentially the most dangerous parts of the HIV virus, so that they will be singled out for attack.
Researchers at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden created a way of illuminating viral molecules that blink on and off, enabling more accurate measurements of a virus’ progressive growth than currently possible. KTH researcher Ilaria Testa says the tactic makes it possible to trace which molecules within the HIV virus are essential for growth.
“That knowledge may very well be put to make use of find therapies for HIV positive patients, since it will probably help discover which molecules to dam to forestall the virus from growing,” Testa says.
The research was reported last week within the scientific journal, Nature Biotechnology. It was carried out on the Science for Life Laboratory (SciLifeLab) in Stockholm.
The important thing to identifying whether molecules are binding to other proteins is to measure how briskly the molecules rotate. Just as larger objects normally rotate slower than the smaller ones, the more mass a molecule accumulates the slower it should rotate.
KTH researcher Ilaria Testa says the tactic improves upon a commonly-used type of fluorescence technique which might only measure fast rotation of molecules. But such techniques are blind to the standard, slower rotation of human proteins.
The researchers doped an HIV viral particle with specially-engineered fluorophones that switch themselves on and off in order that they highlight the orientation of the molecule. With longer on and off states these fluorophones—or reversibly photoswitchable fluorescent proteins—enable the identification of slow rotation of growing molecules.
“We showed that the tactic will be used to discover HIV maturation state and to learn more about how viruses like HIV progress,” Testa says.
Source:
KTH The Royal Institute of Technology