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HIV is able to cause persistent infection by generating mutations that allow the virus to elude both antibody and cytotoxic T-lymphocyte defenses. Mapping single amino-acid mutations in the HIV genome is one approach to understanding how mutations allow the virus to evade host immune response, but such an analysis does not take into account how mutations interact with one another to influence viral fitness. Investigators recently employed a mathematical technique, called random matrix theory (RMT), to address this issue.
Using RMT to analyze a massive set of HIV sequences, the researchers identified a group of amino acids in the Gag polyprotein that rarely had more than one mutation occurring across it at a time. The researchers hypothesized…