In vivo characteristics of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 intersubtype recombination: determination of hot spots and correlation with sequence similarity.

Journal article

Recombination plays a pivotal role in the evolutionary process of many different virus species, including retroviruses. Analysis of all human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) intersubtype recombinants revealed that they are more complex than described initially. Recombination frequency is higher within certain genomic regions, such as partial reverse transcriptase (RT), vif/vpr, the first exons of tat/rev, vpu and gp41. A direct correlation was observed between recombination frequency and sequence similarity across the HIV-1 genome, indicating that sufficient sequence similarity is required upstream of the recombination breakpoint. This finding suggests that recombination in vivo may occur preferentially during reverse transcription through the strand displacement-assimilation model rather than the copy-choice model.

Authors: Magiorkinis, G; Paraskevis, D; Vandamme, A; Magiorkinis, E; Sypsa, V

• Journal: Journal of general virology
• Volume: 84
• Issue: Pt 10
• Pages: 2715-2722
• Publication date: 2003-10-01
• DOI: 10.1099/vir.0.19180-0
• EISSN: 1465-2099
• ISSN: 0022-1317
• Language: English
• Keywords: HIV Reverse Transcriptase; HIV Envelope Protein gp41; Recombination, Genetic; Humans; Evolution, Molecular; Genome, Viral; Viral Proteins; Sequence Alignment; HIV-1; Repetitive Sequences, Nucleic Acid