Since HIV persists within an individual once it has established infection, an arms race between host response and virus evasion takes place throughout the natural history of infection. By investigating the dynamics of the host immune response over time and how the virus adapts to evade it, we seek to identify genetic and structural features of potent immunogens. The response elicited by such immunogens may be unable to eradicate an established infection, but may protect individuals from becoming infected. We, therefore, propose to investigate how the analysis of viral evolution (eg. point mutation, insertions and deletions (indels) and recombination) during viral evasion from broad and potent NAb activity may reveal those viral genetic elements that elicit strong immune responses.
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