Science: water structure of HIV capsid protein and new ideas of anti AIDS drugs

There are about 350000 HIV infected people around the world, and HIV has been constantly adapting and mutating To cope with this situation, scientists try to find a clear HIV key protein and explain its crucial role in the life cycle of the virus With clear images of proteins, scientists can better understand how the body fights viruses to help produce new, more effective antiviral drugs in the future In recent years, scientists have used various techniques to determine the structure of HIV capsid protein Stefan sarafianos, an associate professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at the University of Missouri School of medicine, and his team have been working on detailed structural images of capsid proteins in their natural state The capsid acts as the "invisibility cloak" of HIV: when the virus is replicating in a hostile environment, it can help hide the genetic information of the virus The stability of the capsid is the key to the success of infection: if the capsid is too stable, the internal "goods" will never be transferred correctly; if the capsid is not stable, its contents will be detected by the body's immune defense, triggering anti-virus response So the stability of the capsid is a key to HIV Sarafianos and his team have created the most complete model of HIV capsid protein available The team used a technique called X-ray crystallography to unlock the secrets of proteins They are spliced into patterned lattices through multiple replica images of the aggregation proteins Later, they produced high-power x-ray beams on the crystal By exploring what kind of scattering happens when X-rays hit the protein, the researchers made a 3D map of the protein "But this 3D map doesn't make sense until we make an atomic model of the protein that matches this 3D map," said Karen Kirby, the author of this article After the researchers constructed the HIV capsid model, they were surprised to find the ordered water molecular structure between proteins By watching them carefully, they realized that thousands of water molecules help stabilize the complex capsid scaffold They speculate that this is an important factor in the stability of the whole shell packaging To test the hypothesis, they used chemicals to dehydrate the crystals, which then changed the shape of the protein's structure This change shows that water molecules help the capsid to maintain flexible structure and change different forms, which plays a key role in the life cycle of the virus This new discovery is bound to bring important reference information and new ideas to the research of antiviral drugs.