Figure 2

LAINef fs mutates to have one of three nefs with an open reading frame. (A) At several time points during the eight week infection, viral RNA was reverse transcribed from plasma. After amplification by PCR, nef was sequenced. By four weeks, six of seven mice exhibited nef sequence with a one base deletion just downstream of the four base insertion in a run of five adenines. This one base deletion (∆-1) restored the nef reading frame. In the remaining mouse, a 13 base deletion occurred downstream of the four base insertion (∆-13) which also restored the nef open reading frame. Three of the seven mice had a mixture of two different sequences in plasma which are indicated by the “majority sequence/the minority sequence.” By seven weeks, there were two mice with reversions to wild type sequence (WT) by the removal of four inserted bases from CTCGATCGAG to yield CTCGAG. +4, nef with the original four base insertion intact. (B) The conceptual translations of the LAINeffs∆-1 and LAINeffs∆-13 mutated nefs are aligned with wild type LAI Nef amino acid sequence. Bold indicates missense amino acids encoded by LAINeffs∆-1 and LAINeffs∆-13.