and Public Health

School of Medicine

60 College Street

P.O. Box 208034

New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8034

125 2816

Yale Univ ers ity Department of Epidemiology

Professor Joshua Lederberg
The Rockefeller University
New York, Ny 10021-6399

7 May 1997

 

Dear Joshua,

Thanks for bringing the Arthur article on HLA in SiV to my attention. The
S(H)IV genome is small enough and sufficiently well known that this must be a
case of the virus picking up a cell specified protein and putting it in its own
envelope like, but perhaps more specifically than, influenza virus. Arthur’s
emphasis is on the putative role of this antigen as a target for virus
neutralization. As a practical matter this would seem to have import only for
the first input virus, because once it replicates, the virus will take on the
antigen of the host it grows in and one would have to immunize against self.

Yesterday’s N.Y.Times has an article quoting an as yet unavailable Nature paper
by Jack Strominger (4th. author on the Arthur paper) that offers another
suggestion as to its significance. If the HLA protein on SIV does not carry SIV
peptides, it would not activate CD8’s but might satisfy NK cells to prevent their
attack on infected cells. The Strominger paper deals with CMV and implies that
an HLA like gene is carried by the virus, but the same end might be met by HIV
if it simply modifies the cell protein.

Yours

w Cg
Francis 1. Black L

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