Berkhout B
Department of Virology, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Nucleic Acids Res. 1992 Jan 11;20(1):27-31. doi: 10.1093/nar/20.1.27.
A comparative analysis of TAR RNA structures in human and simian immunodeficiency viruses reveals the conservation of certain structural features despite the divergence in sequence. Both the TAR elements of HIV-1 and SIV-chimpanzee can be folded into relatively simple one-stem hairpin structures. Chemical and RNAase probes were used to analyze the more complex structure of HIV-2 TAR RNA, which folds into a branched hairpin structure. A surprisingly similar RNA conformation can be proposed for SIV-mandrill, despite considerable divergence in nucleotide sequence. A third structural presentation of TAR sequences is seen for SIV-african green monkey. These results are generally consistent with the classification of HIV-SIV viruses in four subgroups based on sequence analyses (both nucleotide- and amino acid-sequences). However, some conserved TAR structures were detected for members of different virus subgroups. It is therefore proposed that RNA structure analysis might provide an additional tool for determining phylogenetic relationships among the HIV-SIV viruses.
对人类和猿猴免疫缺陷病毒中TAR RNA结构的比较分析表明，尽管序列存在差异，但某些结构特征仍具有保守性。HIV-1和黑猩猩SIV的TAR元件都可以折叠成相对简单的单茎发夹结构。化学和RNA酶探针被用于分析HIV-2 TAR RNA更为复杂的结构，它折叠成一个分支发夹结构。尽管核苷酸序列存在相当大的差异，但对于曼氏猕猴SIV，可以提出一种惊人相似的RNA构象。非洲绿猴SIV的TAR序列呈现出第三种结构形式。这些结果总体上与基于序列分析（核苷酸和氨基酸序列）将HIV-SIV病毒分为四个亚组的分类一致。然而，在不同病毒亚组的成员中检测到了一些保守的TAR结构。因此，有人提出RNA结构分析可能为确定HIV-SIV病毒之间的系统发育关系提供一个额外的工具。
