Found the longest, oldest known HIV genome

Dating back to 1966, this genome is 10 years longer than any comparable discovery. Although older HIV sequences have been found, they are all short paragraphs with little information to provide about the origin of HIV.

Therefore, this finding is very important because it allows scientists to test the theories about when HIV appears and the rate of change.

Although the world did not know about AIDS until the 1980s and the oldest confirmed cases from a decade ago, there is ample evidence that the HIV virus appeared much earlier.

Assessing the accumulation of mutations in different virus strains, virologists estimated that the transition from chimpanzee immunodeficiency virus (SIV) to HIV took place between 1881 and 1920. Finding old HIV chains and comparing them with modern ones is the best way to solve these debates.

The genome is 10 years longer than any comparable discovery.

The question of HIV origin has a new meaning. Currently the world faces a new virus that is also transmitted from non-human animals. The more we know about deadly diseases that cross the species barrier, the greater their chance of stopping them in the future.

Dr. Sophie Gryseels from KU Leuven University, a member of the research team, has created a special new method for detecting the genome sequence of viruses in old samples. Sophie Gryseels claims to have found eight of the nine oldest HIV-1 chains to date.

The earliest of these has been since 1976, but Gryseels and co-authors reported finding the virus in a sample from 1966 from a 38-year-old man. Comparing the gene sequence with the versions collected today provides direct evidence that the HIV-1 molecular clock estimates spanning half a century have been remarkably reliable. This virus belongs to HIV-1 group M, accounting for more than 98% of cases.

The authors argue that finding the old gene sequences is important, because the molecular evolution rate seems to vary according to the time frame being considered, so the estimated rate within the time frame is. Recently not necessarily extrapolated.

In fact, conspiracy theories about the origin of HIV are also common, including describing it stemming from a problematic polio vaccine or deliberately created as a biological weapon. However, all of this depends on whether HIV first appeared relatively recently. The first evidence dates back to at least the 1920s.