To develop preventive or therapeutic interventions for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), experimental infection model systems are needed for studying human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), the causative agent of AIDS. However, since HIV-1 infect only human and chimpanzee, it is difficult to conduct the infected animal experiments with HIV-1 itself. Simian immunodeficiency virus (...

In 1981, acquired immunodeficiency was proposed denominator of a newly defined syndrome of diseases that were on the rise in promiscuous male homosexuals and intravenous drug users (1). The reference to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) as a new disease (2,3), instead of a new syndrome composed of known diseases, inspired a search for a single new pathogen (2). In 1983 Montaigner and co...

A fundamental step in the replication of retroviruses is the reverse transcription of the viral RNA genome into a double-stranded DNA provirus. Retroviruses are believed to carry genomic information only as RNA, and synthesis of DNA is thought to start only after virus entry into the infected cell. We report here that infectious mature human immunodeficiency virus type 1 virions contain viral D...

Amino acid substitutions were introduced into four conserved N-linked glycosylation sites of the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 envelope transmembrane glycoprotein, gp41, to alter the canonical N-linked glycosylation sequences. One altered site produced a severe impairment of viral infectivity, which raises the possibility that N-linked sugars at this site may have an important role in the...