HIV originated in a subspecies of chimpanzee in west Central Africa, an
international research team has concluded.
AIDS researchers have long suspected that HIV-1 evolved from one of the
simian immunodeficiency viruses (SIVs) that infect other primates. But
virologists had never identified a SIV strain similar enough to HIV-1 to be its
forerunner.
Now Feng Gao of the University of Alabama in Birmingham and his colleagues
have found a match between the three major groups of HIV and SIV sequences from
the chimp subspecies Pan troglodytes troglodytes (Nature, vol
397, p 436). “But these animals don’t seem to get AIDS,” says Gao, who hopes
this may help in designing a vaccine.
