Ram. Fouchier et al., TEMPORAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ELONGATION OF THE HIV TYPE-1 GLYCOPROTEIN-120 V2 DOMAIN AND THE CONVERSION TOWARD A SYNCYTIUM-INDUCING PHENOTYPE, AIDS research and human retroviruses, 11(12), 1995, pp. 1473-1478
The second and third variable domains (V2 and V3) of the human immunod
eficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) gp120 envelope molecule have been shown
to be determinants of syncytium-inducing (SI) capacity, Previously we
have reported evidence that increased length of the V2 domain and dup
lication or relocation of potential N-linked glycosylation sites in V2
might be used as prognostic markers for evolution toward an SI phenot
ype, Here, we used a PCR assay that discriminates a 6-nucleotide diffe
rence in the length of the V2 domain, with a sensitivity of 1 elongate
d V2 domain when present in a background of 125 to 625 short V2 domain
s, Analysis of DNA isolated directly from PBMCs from 11 HIV-1-infected
individuals prior to SI phenotype conversion revealed, however, that
the usefulness of this PCR for V2 length polymorphism as predictive ma
rker for SI phenotype evolution is limited. The strong association as
observed in our previous study between elongation of the V2 domain and
an SI phenotype prompted us to expand our first analysis, An extremel
y significant correlation was observed between V2 length and virus phe
notype for samples obtained at about the moment of SI conversion, but
not for samples obtained 3 to 35 months after SI phenotype conversion,
suggesting that changes in V2 may be only transiently required to all
ow SI phenotype evolution, This possibly only transient nature of V2 e
longation may explain the discrepancy between results by our group and
others.