Figure 1

Potential consequences of a hypothetical HIV-1 Vif-based intervention. A highly potent Vif antagonist should significantly elevate intracellular concentrations of APOBEC3, inducing the desired end goal of viral error catastrophe (red zone). A moderately effective Vif inhibitor may fail to induce mutational meltdown and instead accelerate evolution of drug resistance, immune escape, and coreceptor phenotype (yellow zone). A weak inhibitor should invoke a level of mutational pressure that falls into the range of natural variation resulting from genetic polymorphisms in Vif and the APOBEC3 loci (green zone).