

HIV is powered by RNA - cloudwalking
http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/news/story/index.cfm?id=3098

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mmaunder
I wonder what effect the fear of HIV's existence has had on reducing the
number of accidental pregnancies and what effect that has had on slowing world
population growth.

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nollidge
HIV does not prevent pregnancy.

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xxpor
I think he is talking about increased condom usage relating to the fear of
getting HIV having an indirect effect on the number of accidental pregnancies.

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Jach
This just reminds me of an old experiment that tried to use artificial group
selection to make Tribolium insects (
<http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/73/12/4604.pdf> ) restrain their breeding,
when instead they just ended up cannibalizing others' eggs (focusing on the
females). People say HIV is a good excuse to fear having sex at all,
conspiracies about the Vatican suggest it was developed for such a purpose,
but nope, people just use condoms. Humans are as silly and fascinating as all
the other life around here.

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nchaimov
Retroviruses generally are.

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icegreentea
I think it's much more subtle than that. 'Powered' is a poor metaphor I think.
I believe what they're referring to is the actual reverse transcription
process. Retroviruses carry its own reverse transcriptease, and must use the
cell's own resources to do the actual transcription (they need to get the dNTP
to build actual DNA strands). The 'big deal' about this discovery is that HIV
can use rNTP to preform reverse transcription instead in cases where there
isn't enough dNTP, which presumably (I'm not an expert in this field) is one
of the reasons why it is so successful compared to other retroviruses.

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nchaimov
Yeah, looking at the journal article the linked article refers to, it appears
that this is the case.

<http://www.jbc.org/content/285/50/39380.full>

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akkartik
rNTP, not RNA.

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jforman
rNTPs are the monomers of RNA

