To better understand the link between microRNA and HIV, Ms. Pillai and her colleagues teamed up with Y.R. “It is early days but we were the first to show that microRNA can interact with HIV genes. Scientists from India have stumbled on a trail so faint that it could well be a dead end but were it to bear out, could mean a new way to understand the AIDS-causing Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). We thought it always blocked HIV but the behaviour is more complex,” he says, emphasising that work now remained to identify the entire network whereby more such RNA combined to impede the progress of HIV. Previously too, other researchers from India and elsewhere have identified 13 of these “anti-HIV” microRNA that seemed to significantly increase or decrease in HIV patients depending on how fast they contracted AIDS.

Source: The Hindu July 02, 2016 21:11 UTC