Complete Sequences of HIV-1 in a Korean Long-term Nonprogressor with HIV-1 Infection

ABSTRACT

To characterize the molecular nature of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-1, we determined the full-length HIV-1 sequences from cultured peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) of a Korean long-term nonprogressor (LTNP). Without antiretroviral therapy, the individual has maintained CD4+ T counts over 500/microliter from 1989 to 1999. Plasma viral RNA copy was 992 U/ml in 1998. Culture supernatant showed positive from culture days 9.4 series of 9 overlapping PCR products were amplified from cultured PBMC and cloned. About 9.2 kb from R of 5' LTR to R of 3' LTR was determined by automated sequencing. The G-to-A hypermutations were shown throughout the entire region. As a result of G to A hypermutations, premature stop codon was found in integrase coding region. Though there was no recombination between subtypes over all genomes, TATA box in both LTRs was TAAAA which is detected in subtype E instead of TATAA in subtype B. And, there were nucleotide GC insertion between NF- kappaB I and Spl III, and duplication of TCF-lalpha in LTR. We could not find any deletion of amino acid in Nef, Gog, Pol and Euv gene. This study is the first report on molecular nature of full genomes of HIV-1 isolated in Korea.