Chasing viruses.
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Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome↗
Biomedical subjects
Ronald Desrosiers
Publications and source records attributed to Ronald Desrosiers.
Impact of Nef-mediated downregulation of major histocompatibility complex class I on immune response to simian immunodeficiency virus.
Functional activities that have been ascribed to the nef gene product of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) include CD4 downregulation, major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I downregulation, downregulation of other plasma membrane proteins, and lymphocyte activation. Monkeys were infected experimentally with SIV containing difficult-to-revert mutations in nef that selectively eliminated MHC downregulation but not these other activities. Monkeys infected with these mutant forms of SIV exhibited higher levels of CD8(+) T-cell responses 4 to 16 weeks postinfection than seen in monkeys infected with the parental wild-type virus. Furthermore, unusual compensatory mutations appeared by 16 to 32 weeks postinfection which restored some or all of the MHC-downregulating activity. These results indicate that nef does serve to limit the virus-specific CD8 cellular response of the host and that the ability to downregulate MHC class I contributes importantly to the totality of nef function.
Animals↗
The genetic epidemiology of spontaneous endometriosis in the rhesus monkey.
The etiology of endometriosis is uncertain, but there is increasing evidence that it is inherited as a complex genetic trait like diabetes or asthma. In such complex traits, multiple gene loci conferring susceptibility to the disease interact with each other and the environment to produce the phenotype. The study of such interactions in humans can be problematic. Thus, the availability of an animal model, which shares many aspects of anatomy and physiology with humans, is potentially a valuable tool for investigating the genetic epidemiology of the disease. Since endometriosis develops spontaneously in the rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta) and the tissue is morphologically identical to its human counterpart, this population provides a unique opportunity to conduct such studies in this condition.
Animals↗