More RT in HIV-1 requires more NNRTI to inhibit infection

What is it about?

The amount of HIV-1 reverse transcriptase (RT) was changed per virus. The ability of different RT inhibitors, including nucleoside analogs (e.g. AZT, 3TC, FTC) and non-nucleoside RT inhibitors (e.g. nevirapine, efavirenz), to inhibit viruses with more or less RT was tested. The ability of NNRTIs to inhibit the virus changed depending on the amount of RT in the virus. This makes sense, since these drugs bind to RT in order to inhibit replication. The more molecules there are, the more drug you need. Conversely, the amount of RT per virus did not impact NRTI inhibition of HIV-1. This is likely because NRTIs are incorporated into the nascent DNA molecule by each RT molecule one at a time and the amount of drug molecules is in excess of RT molecules that can be packaged into a virus (approx. 50-200).

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