Primer Unblocking and Rescue of DNA Synthesis by Azidothymidine (AZT)-resistant HIV-1 Reverse Transcriptase
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Azidothymidine (AZT) is a widely used inhibitor of type 1 human immunodeficiency virus reverse transcriptase (RT) that acts as chain terminator. Upon treatment, mutations conferring AZT resistance to RT are gradually selected. It has been shown that resistant RT is able to unblock the AZT-terminated primer by an ATP-dependent mechanism. However, this resistance mechanism has only been demonstrated for DNA-dependent DNA elongation. Here, we compared the AZT resistance of mutant RT during DNA elongation on DNA and RNA templates. We showed that, during DNA elongation, primer unblocking and rescue of DNA synthesis take place with similar rate constants on DNA and RNA templates. However, the fraction of a primer eventually repaired during RNA-dependent DNA synthesis is 2x lower compared with that of DNA-dependent synthesis, leading to reduced resistance. We also compared the initiation of reverse transcription, which uses tRNA(3)(Lys) as a primer and displays characteristic kinetic features, and the subsequent RNA-dependent elongation. Unlike during elongation, resistant RT was unable to unblock the AZT-terminated primer during initiation of (-) DNA strand synthesis. Our results demonstrate that the efficiency of primer unblocking conferred by the AZT resistance mutations greatly vary during the different steps of the provirus synthesis. These results also suggest that inhibitors specifically targeting the initiation of reverse transcription might prove to be advantageous, as compared with elongation inhibitors.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".