Evolutionary genomics and HIV restriction factors.

Pyndiah N; Telenti A; Rausell A

doi:10.1097/COH.0000000000000138

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Journal article

Evolutionary genomics and HIV restriction factors.

Pyndiah N aUniversity of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland bGenomic Medicine, J. Craig Venter Institute, La Jolla, California, USA cVital-IT group, SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Telenti A
Rausell A

2015-01-17

Published in:

Current opinion in HIV and AIDS. - 2015

English 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.

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