Development of Real Time PCR to detect pol and env regions from HIV-1 subtypes B and F and screening of B/F recombinant strains. / Otimização de técnica de PCR em tempo real para detecção das regiões pol e env dos subtipos B e F de HIV-1 e triagem de seus recombinantes.

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2009

RESUMO

Background: The discovery of 42 HIV-1 circulating recombinant forms (CRF) together with the innumerous unique HIV recombinants forms, makes clear the role of genetic recombination for the epidemic. In Brazil, clades B, F, and C co-circulate, with 5 recently described CRFs. Real Time PCR is a rapid and reliable tool capable of detecting different HIV-1 subtypes and recombinant profiles. Objective: The aim of this study was to develop real time PCR systems in order to detect the Brazilian CRF_28 and CRF_29, which are B/F recombinants, as well as detect B/F recombinants generated by in vitro competition assays. In future, these systems should be able to discriminate subtypes in clinical surveys. Methodology: MT-4 cells were separately infected with the viral strains BZ167 (subtype B) and BR020 (subtype F), and supernatant was collected in order to optimizing the real time PCR systems (TaqMan) developed to detect the subtype profile of different genomic regions, including pol gene (protease, reverse transcriptase, integrase) and env gene (gp120 and gp41). The designed primers should be able to equally amplify the subtype B and F, which should be discriminated by subtype-specific probes. For future validation of these PCR systems, 157 clinical samples from the city of Santos were sequenced and phylogeneticaly analyzed in order to perform the clade assignment with Neighbor-Joining algorithm (Phylip software package v3.5). Results: The designed systems were able to differentiate the utilized viral strains. The estimated efficiencies for each system, for each probe, subtypes B and F separately, were respectively: 80,97 and 85,16% for protease region; 89,80 and 75,09% for reverse transcriptase region; 80,90% and 83,83% for integrase region; 93,49 and 98,93% for gp120 region; and 88,45 and 80,19% for gp41 region. For the co-infected cell culture, the detection of each subtype was performed in the first and fifth passages. Generally, the initial concentration of subtype B appeared to have decreased, some of them becoming undetectable, whereas subtype F seemed to increase with the passages, for protease, reverse transcriptase, gp120 and gp41 regions. The integrase region was an exception, since only the subtype B was detected, with increasing Cycle threshold (Ct) values over time. Sequencing results revealed that 65 out of 157 samples had the subtype profile defined for all regions. 43 out of 71 were defined as B, whereas 3 were F in all regions. 12 samples presented the CRF_28 profile, and 9 samples presented the CRF_29 profile. There were no subtype C samples in any genomic regions analyzed. Conclusion: The use of real time PCR technique for identification of fragments subtypes in cell culture and for evaluation of replicative dynamics of recombination in co-infected cultures warrants its potential use in future in vivo surveys. This methodology proved to be efficient, fast, less cumbersome and less expensive than DNA sequencing. The newly designed systems performed for supernatant of competition assays had suggested a divergent distribution of subtypes for the different regions, which reflects the possibility of genetic recombination. Results from clinical samples revealed a high prevalence of CRF_28/29 in this geographic region, thus reflecting the resulting consequence of different co-circulating strains and pointing to the need for a careful surveillance.

ASSUNTO(S)

imunologia 1. hiv-1 2. diversidade genética 3. subtipos 4. pcr em tempo real

ACESSO AO ARTIGO

Documentos Relacionados