By inactivating any one of five human genes, scientists can prevent HIV from entering and growing in immune cells.

    Antiviral therapies targeting host genes that the virus depends on, rather than targeting the virus itself, are promising because these genes do not mutate as frequently as viruses do. This could avoid the development of drug resistance. Bruce Walker at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and his colleagues screened the genome of human T cells and identified five genes not essential to cell survival whose inactivation protected cells from HIV infection. Cultured cells lacking these genes resisted HIV infection. The genes encode proteins that facilitate virus entry into human cells, and one that mediates cell aggregation, which allows the virus to spread between cells. The authors say their approach could also be used to find drug targets for other pandemic viruses.

Source: www.nature.com

Gut bacterium indirectly causes symptoms by altering fruit fly microbiome

     CagA, a protein produced by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, can alter the population of microbes living in the fruit fly gut, leading to disease symptoms, according to new research published in PLOS Pathogens by Tiffani Jones and Karen Guillemin of the University of Oregon.

  Microbes living in the human gut normally help keep people healthy, but disruptions to this microbial community can promote disease. Infections with specific microbial species can disrupt the gut microbiome, but it is unclear how such disruption occurs and whether it promotes disease.