The Essential Role of the Accessory Protein Vif
The Essential Role of the Accessory Protein Vif
Anne-Mieke Vandamme
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*Correspondence: Anne-Mieke Vandamme, Email not available
Abstract
One by one, the roles of HIV’s accessoryproteins get unraveled. Now it has becomeclear that Vif should no longer be consideredan accessory protein, but deserves the fullattention of drug designers. The Virion InfectivityFactor or Vif was originally designated an accessoryprotein, because Vif-deleted viruses werestill able to replicate in ‘permissive’ cell lines.Now Sheehy, et al (Nature 2002;418:646-650)show that these cell lines, in contrast to ‘nonpermissive’cell lines, lack a protein, which theycall CEM15 after the cell line in which theprotein was identified.
