Archived HIV-1 minority variants detected by ultra-deep pyrosequencing in provirus may be fully replication competent.

摘要

In a recent study, Archer et al. [1] described a protocol enabling a fast and accurate handling of large data sets obtained by massively parallel pyrosequencing for genotypic prediction of HIV-1 coreceptor usage. This algorithm was used to study the virus present in one patient undergoing short-term treatment with a chemo-kine (C-C motif) receptor 5 (CCR-5) inhibitor, in which a phenotypic standard test [2] (Trofile; Monogram Biosciences, South San Francisco, California, USA) highlighted the presence of chemokine (CXC motif) receptor 4 (CXCR-4) using virus under therapy. The results show that the frequency of a CXCR4-using (X4) minority variant population, representing 0.5% of the initial virus quasispecies, became the predominant subpopulation, reaching 81% at day 11. Phylogenetic analysis showed that these variants did not evolve de novo as a result of drug pressure acting directly on CCR5-using (R5) virus, but they emerged from preexisting CXCR4-using variants.