I have a bunch of questions i need help with (mainly about AIDS/HIV)...?

1. Why can't scientists use a weaked or killed HIV in a vaccine, as is done with other vaccines?

2. Why must researchers use humans to test an AIDS vaccine?

3. Why might vaccines using bacterial plasmid DNA be very effective?

4. What particular type of cell does HIV infect, and what proteins are involved during the entry stage?

5. What do the enzymes reverse tanscriptase and intergase do to help HIV?

6. How might scientists interrupt the HIV life cycle?



Any help would be much appreciated. I'm doing a project and these are some things I'm confused about, thanks.

First thing to understand is that the HIV virus mutates - it changes... continuously.. also the HV virus will pass through the brain/blood barrier... all of this PLUS... make the virus difficult to isolate.. it's replication rate, the damned thing is hideous.

where did you get such knowledgable questions?

the following sites will answer your questions and will give you answers that can be referenced in your project - typically "blogged sites" and those "difinitive" sites not reviewed by professional peers (Wikipedia - although a good place to start) are not considered acceptable references.


http://www.thebody.com/index/whatis/basi...
http://www.thebody.com/content/whatis/ar...

1. Honestly I don't know but it might be because it's a fundamentally different type of virus from most of the ones we have vaccines for. It takes over the body's immune system and makes it produce more HIV viruses instead of T cells.

2. Because it's a human virus.

3. Dunno.

4. Dunno.

5. Not precisely sure but I assume they're used in the process for creating T cells, and thus in an HIV-infected person, in the process for creating more HIV viruses.

6. It's not technically alive, so I don't know about this.

Usually it's best to do your homework honestly and by yourself ;)