HIV evolutionary genetics

摘要

As part of its life cycle, HIV infects a host cell and reverse transcribes its RNA genome into cDNA, which is subsequently integrated into the host cell's nuclear genetic material. Reverse transcription, mediated by the viral reverse transcriptase, is a low-fidelity process with the potential to accumulate errors at the rate of 10~(-5) to 10~(-4) per nucleotide site per generation. As a consequence of this process and a rapid rate of turnover of productively infected cells (between 140 and 300 generations per year; refs. 2 and 3), the viral population in an infected individual has the potential to reach a relatively high level of genetic diversity, with pairs of homologous viral sequences differing by as much as 15%.