The genetic structure of HIV-1 – the main cause of AIDS – has been sequenced by scientists in North Carolina, USA. This will give information firstly on how to attack the virus and secondly how it manages to avoid its hosts’ immune system so well.
The HIV-1 virus is an RNA-based, rather than DNA-based virus. In this respect it is the same as the swine flu virus. Being RNA-based makes a virus more complex to understand in some ways. It also gives a virus to ability, potentially, to mutate much faster than on which is DNA based.
Researchers hail the sequencing as an important step in understanding and treating the HIV virus.
