April 12, 2001

2 min read

Google Logo Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm

HIV Plays Both Offense and Defense

By Kate Wong

Join Our Community of Science Lovers!

On supporting science journalism

If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

When it comes to battling the body's immune system, few viruses are as skilled as the one that causes AIDS. Yet despite years of scientific scrutiny, HIV has guarded its war strategies closely. Now new research, described today in the journal Nature, reveals one of the virus's secrets to success. According to the report, a protein dubbed Nef largely controls HIV's all-important ability to destroy the immune system cells dispatched to eliminate HIV-infected cells in the first place. This viral protein, the researchers say, protects infected host cells while destroying uninfected immune systems cells nearby.

Earlier research had shown that cells surrounding an HIV-infected cell die as a result of apoptosis, or programmed cell suicide, and scientists knew that Nef had a hand in starting that process. The new work, however, demonstrates that Nef uses that same trigger to protect its infected host cell, binding to and inhibiting an apoptosis protein called ASK1. "It's HIV going both ways, playing offense and defense," team member Warner C. Greene of the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology observes. "It is a rather remarkable example of the cunning strategy the AIDS virus employs to help ensure its survival and spread."

The findings suggest that blocking the assembly of Nef and ASK1 could curtail HIV infection, and eventually lead to the death of the virus by not allowing it sufficient time to reproduce itself, Greene adds. (In fact, those rare HIV patients who happen to lack the nef gene progress to AIDS far more slowly than their nef-carrying counterparts.) Developing a drug that targets Nef, however, will first require that researchers discover a molecule to interrupt that assembly. "If we can win the battle at the single cell level," Greene notes, "then we will be in a better position to win the war in the millions of HIV-infected patients."

Kate Wong is an award-winning science writer and senior editor for features at Scientific American, where she has focused on evolution, ecology, anthropology, archaeology, paleontology and animal behavior. She is fascinated by human origins, which she has covered for nearly 30 years. Recently she has become obsessed with birds. Her reporting has taken her to caves in France and Croatia that Neandertals once called home to the shores of Kenya’s Lake Turkana in search of the oldest stone tools in the world, as well as to Madagascar on an expedition to unearth ancient mammals and dinosaurs, the icy waters of Antarctica, where humpback whales feast on krill, and a “Big Day” race around the state of Connecticut to find as many bird species as possible in 24 hours. Wong is co-author, with Donald Johanson, of Lucy’s Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins. She holds a bachelor of science degree in biological anthropology and zoology from the University of Michigan. Follow her on Bluesky @katewong.bsky.social

More by Kate Wong

It’s Time to Stand Up for Science

If you enjoyed this article, I’d like to ask for your support. Scientific American has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.

I’ve been a Scientific American subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.

If you subscribe to Scientific American, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.

In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can't-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world's best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.

There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you’ll support us in that mission.

Thank you,

David M. Ewalt, Editor in Chief, Scientific American

Subscribe