Publication: The role of the TAT gene in the pathogenesis of HIV infection
Issued Date
2005-03-01
Resource Type
ISSN
01251562
Other identifier(s)
2-s2.0-20444443919
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Mahidol University
Rights Holder(s)
SCOPUS
Bibliographic Citation
Southeast Asian Journal of Tropical Medicine and Public Health. Vol.36, No.2 (2005), 352-361
Suggested Citation
Pornsawan Amarapal, Surang Tantivanich, Kruavon Balachandra, Kazuhiro Matsuo, Punnee Pitisutithum, Manus Chongsa-nguan The role of the TAT gene in the pathogenesis of HIV infection. Southeast Asian Journal of Tropical Medicine and Public Health. Vol.36, No.2 (2005), 352-361. Retrieved from: https://repository.li.mahidol.ac.th/handle/20.500.14594/17056
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Title
The role of the TAT gene in the pathogenesis of HIV infection
Abstract
The human immunodeficiency virus Tat regulatory protein is essential for virus replication and for the efficient transcription of HIV-1 provirus, and in the pathogenesis of AIDS. The role of the tat gene was investigated in 300 samples. It was found that 71.7% were subtype CRF_01 AE, 9.3% were subtype B, while 11.7 and 7.3% of them were cross-reactive and non-typeable, respectively. Moreover the results from peptide ELISA also showed that a low CD4 cell count was related to a low anti-Tat antibody (p<0.05), which may be due to the progression of HIV-1, which can be found predominantly in AIDS patients. The results of nested PCR showed that the second Tat exon might also play a role in T-cell activation. Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was used to measure HIV-1 mRNA expression in PBMC. RT-PCR negative results were found mostly in the asymptomatic HIV-seropositive group (88%). HIV-1 mRNA expression was found to correlate with current immunologic status. The differences in Tat protein sequences from DNA sequencing between the patients who had anti-Tat antibody positive and anti-Tat antibody negative, were not significant (p>0.05). These results suggested that the Tat amino acid sequences were conserved among each group of samples and did not change significantly compared with the consensus sequence in previous studies. Several factors make Tat an attractive target for vaccine design.