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Virion infectivity factor, or Vif, is a component of HIV that neutralizes APOBEC3G, a powerful human cell enzyme that can sabotage the genetic machinery of viruses similar to HIV. "We now know that human beings produce a natural anti-HIV protein," said Dr. Warner Greene, director of the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology at the University of California-San Francisco. "If we can somehow prevent Vif from doing its dirty work, we could unleash that protein."

Nathaniel Landau of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, who delivered a plenary speech at the International AIDS Society Conference in Paris in July, speculated that different people may carry slightly different versions of the enzyme in varying quantities. "This could be one of the multiple factors that control the speed at which individuals develop disease," he said.

Once scientists understand how Vif blocks APOBEC, they can pursue ways to disable Vif, or to design a modified version of APOBEC that Vif cannot stop. Such research could further a pressing goal of AIDS science: to develop a new line of antiviral medicines that are not toxic and that do not lose their potency over time as the virus develops resistance.

Editor's Note: from the San Francisco Chronicle