Scientists have provided the first-ever glimpse of the structure of a key protein found on the surface of a specific subgroup of the human immunodeficiency virus, HIV-1.
This three-dimensional understanding of how the protein - gp120 - is built is more than just a basic scientific advance.
“There’s a tremendous continuing effort to develop a vaccine for HIV,” says Ron Diskin, postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology, “and most of those efforts use gp120. Having more structural information will facilitate better vaccine design.”
Full story at Futurity.