Commonly Elicited Antibodies against the Base of the HIV-1 Env Trimer Guide the Population-Level Evolution of a Structure-Regulating Region in gp41

作者：Roberth Anthony Rojas Chávez, Devlin Boyt, Nathan Schwery, Changze Han, Li Wu, Hillel Haim · 发表于：Journal of Virology · 年份：2022 · DOI：10.1128/jvi.00406-22 · 被引用次数：4 · 研究领域：HIV Research and Treatment、HIV/AIDS drug development and treatment、Monoclonal and Polyclonal Antibodies Research

Infection by HIV-1 elicits formation of antibodies that target the viral Env proteins and can inactivate the virus. The specific targets of these antibodies vary among infected individuals. It is unclear whether some target specificities are shared among the antibody responses of different individuals. We observed that antibodies against the base of the Env protein are commonly elicited during infection. The selective pressure applied by such antibodies is weak. As a result, they do not completely eliminate the sensitive forms of the virus from the population, but maintain their frequency at a low level that has not increased since the beginning of the AIDS pandemic. Interestingly, the changes in Env do not occur at the sites targeted by the antibodies, but at a distinct region of Env, the fusion peptide-proximal region, which regulates their exposure.