Current Research Projects

Negative sense transcripts in HIV-1: the Regulation of Expression and Role of vpo/Vpo

The HIV-1 positive sense strand encodes nine different proteins. These include structural proteins, regulatory proteins and accessory proteins. A tenth, negative sense, transcript (antisense, negative sense gene or vpo) has also been identified along with six short open reading frames (sORFs). The objectives of this investigation are: (1) To confirm the regulatory role of upstream sORFs in regulation of vpo, (2) To investigate the mechanism of regulation of vpo translation by the six upstream sORFs, and (3) To determine the role of the predicted protein structural elements of Vpo.