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. 2017 Apr 26;2(2):e00138-17.
doi: 10.1128/mSphere.00138-17. eCollection 2017 Mar-Apr.

Toward a Cure: Does Host Immunity Play a Role?

Jielin Zhang  1 , Clyde S Crumpacker  1
Affiliations

Toward a Cure: Does Host Immunity Play a Role?

Jielin Zhang et al. mSphere. .

Abstract

Three decades of research on human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and AIDS reveal that the human body has developed through evolution a genome immune system embodying epigenetic regulation against pathogenic nucleic acid invasion. In HIV infection, this epigenetic regulation plays a cardinal role in HIV RNA production that silences HIV transcription at a molecular (RNA) level, controls viral load at a cellular (biological) level, and governs the viremic stage of AIDS at the clinical (patient) level. Even though the human genome is largely similar among humans and HIV is a single viral species, human hosts show significant differences in viral RNA levels, ranging from cell to organ to individual and expressed as elite controllers, posttreatment controllers, and patients with AIDS. These are signature biomarkers of typical epigenetic regulation whose importance has been shunted aside by interpreting all of AIDS pathogenesis by the known properties of innate and adaptive immunity. We propose that harnessing the host genome immune system, defined as epigenetic immunity, against HIV infection will lead toward a cure.

Keywords: cure; epigenetic immunity; epigenetics; host immunity; human immunodeficiency virus.

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Figures

FIG 1
FIG 1
Three core factors of epigenetic immunity—the host genome’s immunity. The host protects its DNA from foreign nucleic acid invasion via an epigenetic mechanism, which consists of DNA methylation, histone acetylation/methylation, and noncoding RNA (ncRNA) activity. Each works independently but cohesively with the other two, protecting the structure and function of the host genome, ranging from heterochromatin, euchromatin, up to RNA transcription and silencing.
FIG 2
FIG 2
HERVs are close relatives of HIV, many of which have the defective genomes, and are kept silenced permanently in the human genome via epigenetic regulation for generations without causing harm.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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