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Nature 455, 605-606 (2 October 2008) | doi:10.1038/455605a; Published online 1 October 2008
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AIDS: Prehistory of HIV-1
Paul M. Sharp1 & Beatrice H. Hahn2
Abstract
The origin of the current AIDS pandemic has been a subject of great interest and speculation. Viral archaeology sheds light on the geography and timescale of the early diversification of HIV-1 in humans.
Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) must have been spreading through the human population long before AIDS was first described in 1981, but very few strains from this 'prehistoric' period (pre-1980s) have been characterized. Viral sequences from earlier times can provide insight into the early spread of HIV-1, because the rapid rate of evolution of this virus — up to a million times faster than that of animal DNA — means that substantial amounts of sequence change occur in a matter of decades1.
- Paul M. Sharp is at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3JT, UK.
Email: paul.sharp@ed.ac.uk - Beatrice H. Hahn is in the Departments of Medicine and Microbiology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama 35294, USA.
Email: bhahn@uab.edu
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