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Article: Antiviral 'leash' to tame HIV
- Article from:
- The Hindustan Times
- Article date:
- October 30, 2009
CopyrightCopyright © HT Media Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Washington, Oct. 30 -- An antiviral protein produced by the immune system, dubbed tetherin, tames HIV and other viruses by literally putting them on a leash, to prevent their escape from infected cells, according to a new study.
The work allowed the research team to design a completely artificial protein -- one that did not resemble native tetherin in its sequence at all -- that could nonetheless put a similar stop to the virus.
"Tetherin is essentially a rod with anchors at either end that are critical for its function," says Paul Bieniasz of Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at The Rockefeller University.
Either one of those anchors gets ...