I've just finished reading the "Big Four" journals for biophysicists (Nature, Science, PNAS, and Cell), and had some fun science to share.

First, a roundup in Science on novel emerging treatments for HIV. Merck has developed an attractive candidate for attacking HIV's mechanism of weaving itself into our genes. The working title they've given this drug candidate is MK-0518, and it's an inhibitor of the HIV enzyme integrase:

Beatriz Grinsztejn of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, described a multisite, placebo-controlled clinical trial of MK-0518 that involved 167 people infected with multidrug-resistant HIV. MK-0518 lowered the level of HIV to below 400 copies per milliliter—a 99% drop—in 80% of the treated participants. "That's a tough population, and to get 80% [of patients] below 400 copies is about as good as it gets," said Michael Saag, who heads the AIDS research center at the University of Alabama, Birmingham (UAB).

Used in combination with other antiviral drugs, MK-0518 could potentially revolutionize the treatment of HIV.

The review also discusses recent genetic evidence in chimps that may shed light on the origin of HIV-1. Researchers in Cameroon, Africa, have discovered a chimpanzee Simian Immunodificiency Virus (SIV), variant cpz, that is thought to be the ancestor of HIV-1. They also discovered certain communities of chimps that exhibit a high number of SIVcpz infections, separated by just one river from another community with very low number of SIVcpz infections. It turned out that the virus in the more affected community is even more closely related to HIV-1.

Genetic evidence "suggests that the SIVcpz closest to HIV-1 is a combination of SIVs isolated from red cap mangabeys and monkeys from the Cercopithecus genus."

Filling in the final piece of the origin puzzle, Sharp said the virus must have reached a major city to start the AIDS epidemic. He posited that a person became infected in rural Cameroon and then traveled by river to Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. Kinshasa has the greatest genetic diversity of HIV-1, suggesting that the virus has been there longer than anywhere else. It also was home to the first known HIV-infected person, a Bantu man who had his blood sampled in 1959 for a malaria study.

It's impressive that we can even begin to unfold these sorts of mysteries.