|
Feb. 11, 2004
Gene Mutations and Killing T-Cells
Do Mutations in the gag Gene Impact the Ability of HIV-1 to Kill T-Cells?
Samantha Bates, 13, San Carlos, Calif.
Finalist, Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge, 2003
Project background: Throughout her childhood, Samantha often visited her mother's and father's laboratories, and she became familiar with the basic instrumentation. With the help of her father's colleagues and his lab, Samantha took on a project that her father didn't have time for at his job as a researcher of infectious diseases at a biotech company. She learned how to sequence plasmids (special types of DNA molecules) in order to find out if mutations in a gene called gag could affect the ability of HIV, which causes AIDS, to replicate and kill T-cells.
 |
| V. Miller |
Tactics and results: In all, Samantha sequenced the 3' gag gene from 12 isolates of HIV. She compared those sequences with 163 others already present in the lab's database that exhibited a wide range of replication values. Once the sequences were recovered, she looked for mutations that were more commonly found in one group or the other.
Samantha found that the most significant correlations were seen between insertions in the PTAP motif of gag and higher replication values. Potentially these mutations may enable HIV to bud more efficiently by enhanced binding with a protein called Tsg101, thereby producing more viruses per infected cell. This may result in greater virulence.
Read the latest science fair news
Get a science fair tip
Browse a list of science fair topics
Talk Back:
Do you have any comments about this ScienceFairZone? Send them
to us using the form below.
|
SNK RSS Feed 
