Pyndiah N Telenti A Rausell A 2015 PURPOSE OF REVIEW To provide updated insights into innate antiviral immunity and highlight prototypical evolutionary features of well characterized HIV restriction factors. RECENT FINDINGS Recently, a new HIV restriction factor, Myxovirus resistance 2, has been discovered and the region/residue responsible for its activity identified using an evolutionary approach. Furthermore, IFI16, an innate immunity protein known to sense several viruses, has been shown to contribute to the defense to HIV-1 by causing cell death upon sensing HIV-1 DNA. SUMMARY Restriction factors against HIV show characteristic signatures of positive selection. Different patterns of accelerated sequence evolution can distinguish antiviral strategies--offense or defence--as well as the level of specificity of the antiviral properties. Sequence analysis of primate orthologs of restriction factors serves to localize functional domains and sites responsible for antiviral action. We use recent discoveries to illustrate how evolutionary genomic analyses help identify new antiviral genes and their mechanisms of action. https://sonar.ch/global/documents/39706 eng info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.1097/COH.0000000000000138 info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/pmid/25594315 Current opinion in HIV and AIDS. - 2015 Evolution, Molecular Genome, Viral Genomics HIV Infections HIV-1 Host-Pathogen Interactions Humans Immunity, Innate Myxovirus Resistance Proteins Evolutionary genomics and HIV restriction factors. http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_6501